


Steer Your Way

by sanidine



Series: Beat the Devil [2]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drinking, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Poverty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-10-14 10:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 51,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10534488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: A revolving door that only goes one way.Alternatively - if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.





	1. Comedown Champion

**Author's Note:**

> Back at it again - same universe, same basic challenge to myself to make every chapter at least 1000 words. But this time around I am going to shoot for 30 chapters on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule instead of almost daily like last time. I'm going to add character and relationship tags as I go, apologies in advance if the info bar gets a little unwieldy. 
> 
> Blanket warnings for alcohol and drug use, anything else questionable will be warned for on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
> 
> I don't want it to seem like BtD was Year One and this is going to be Year Two. A bunch of BtD happened between spring and summer - the stuff with Alexa, Heath and Rhyno, Neville, and most of Dean’s chapters. Luke’s incident happened in mid August. Even though it was one of the earlier chapters, Baron's motorcycle accident was chronologically one of the last things that happened during a freak storm in early October. So, I think that the majority of this fic will be during the same fall/winter with some in the next spring. As with BtD this is probably going to jump back and forth on what story is being told, but the stories themselves should generally be in chronological order.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose - flashes)

Dean was standing in the 7-11 and his ears were ringing. Those were the facts that he knew for sure even if the rest of it was kind of fuzzy. The 7-11 seemed normal enough, illuminated by the same hypertight light that it always was, but the ringing was a high screaming hum that sloped from one side of his head to the other.

It reminded Dean of the couple of times in his life that he had gone shooting, which meant that it was probably in his head. Wait, wouldn't ringing ears always be in his head by definition? Fuck. Internal instead of external causes was what he had meant. Because Dean doubted he had been shooting before he had come to the 7-11. Aside from the fact that he wasn't allowed to own a gun, Dean had never seen the appeal of wasting money on ammo just to put more holes into rusted out refrigerators. But Dean also remembered that he had been in a car at least once, a long time ago, with someone who had shot out at a road sign. The barrel had been out the window but the rest of the shotgun had been inside and Dean could remember the roar of the gunshot filling the car, trying to put his little hands up over his ears except for how it had already been too late. That had sounded like this.

It was a relief when the ringing started to fade out, except that it was replaced in short order by the twanging chords of Margaritaville, which. Not worse, but not really any better either. Jimmy Buffett made Dean doubt his sanity, but the rest of the gas station didn't change even when Dean rubbed at his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He was still in the 7-11, and there was a can of Bush’s Great Northern Beans on the shelf in front of him.

That was how he knew for sure that he was deep in reality again.

Dean was standing in front of the weird shelf in the back of the convenience store, the one that didn't have any if the usual gas station stuff like candy bars and beef jerky but was instead stocked with chicken soup and cans of Teriyaki SPAM and jars of bread and butter pickles. But there weren't any other beans. Only the lonely great northerns, that can had been there as long as Dean could remember. 

He knew that it was the same one because he had nicked the edge of the label with his thumbnail one day. Dean had wanted to see if anyone would ever actually buy great northern beans from a 7-11. But no one ever had. It seemed unbearably sad, all of a sudden. There wasn't even anything wrong with the can. Well, except that the label was torn a little bit, but Dean had done that himself. He hadn't thought that a little tear in the paper would be enough to condemn these beans. But then again, what the fuck did the know? Maybe he was the only one who was allowed to buy them now. He really hoped not - Dean fucking hated great northern beans.

“Hey, man.” He heard someone say, and Dean swayed on his feet a little bit as he turned his head. Chad was standing behind the counter and staring at Dean from across the length of the store. “You're not looking so good. You want me to see if I can find someone to give you a ride home?”

The light coming through the window behind Chad was too bright to look at. Dean tilted his head down as he tried to figure out his answer, looked down at his hand and. At some point he must have picked up the can of beans because now he was holding it. The bold label with it's blue and yellow and the picture of the glistening pile of pale beans seemed to shine back up at him.

“Nah, man.” Dean said “Nah, I'm good. Just checkin' out these - - beans.”

“What?”

Dean blinked, raised his head up and looked around. 

It had been daytime when he had been at the gas station and it was still light out but Dean wasn't in the gas station anymore. He was sitting in a parked car in front if the laundromat. When Dean realized that he was in a car he had thought for a second that Chad had found someone to give him a ride home after all. Which. Maybe that had been a better idea than Dean had given Chad credit for. Dean really wasn't feeling too great.

He could see out through the windshield and into the front window of the building where the washers were spinning and spinning, a couple people inside killing time on their phones as they waited. Then he looked over and saw Dolph Ziggler sitting in the driver's seat, staring back at him with one eyebrow raised. Dean still couldn't remember getting in the car, but he knew then with a bone deep certainty that Chad wasn't responsible for this. Chad never would have done this to him.

“What?”

“Yeah, man, that's what I asked you. You just sorta checked out and started talking about beans.”

“Uh.” Dean didn't owe Ziggler or anyone any explanation for anything that he did, but. Maybe saying it out loud would help him make sense of it. “At the gas station. The 7-11. There's a can of great northern beans.”

“You don't gotta lie to me, buddy.” Ziggler laughed, then, and plucked something out of Dean’s hand that Dean hadn't even realized he was holding until his fingers snapped shut on nothing. Ziggler leaned over to snort something off of the back of the phone that was resting face down on the center console. Oh. So that's what they were doing. 

“You've been watching that weird porno, huh?” Ziggler continued after a second, clearing his throat.

Ziggler was rubbing at his face with the heel of his hand as he watched Dean out of the corner of his eye. Dean mimicked the gesture without really thinking about it. Bad idea. When he did that all the flesh on his face moved around, pushed and shifted, but his skull didn't move at all. 

“Huh?” Dean tried. Squishing his face around life that had left him feeling nauseous and disoriented and he had lost track of the thread.

“That freaky shit where they wrestle in baked beans or whatever the fuck. Listen, dude, it's cool. If you're into that I bet my buddy Barry could hook you up with some DVDs.”

Ziggler passed the rolled up bill back to Dean, who took it without hesitation and watched, feeling nothing but tired. “Yeah, no thanks. I think I'm - - okay.”

“Dean, you're clearly not okay.” Sami’s voice was tight and concerned as he angled to try and get a better look at Dean’s eyes. Dean took a deep breath of the night air, still and cool, listened to the crickets chirping in the grass on the side if the road and then listening to Sami again as Sami asked “How did you even get all the way out here?”

_ ‘All the way out where?’ _ was what Dean wanted to ask but didn't. Because he knew it would worry Sami and because Sami didn't really give him a chance to reply as he fretted over Dean, picked a dead leaf out of Dean’s hair as he asked

“And whose phone did you call me from? I didn't recognize the number so I almost didn't pick up… Dean, are you feeling okay? No, I know the answer is no, uh. Were you trying to walk home from one of these farms? You seem a little disoriented. Are you dehydrated?”

That seemed as good an explanation as any  Sami seemed relieved when Dean nodded in agreement, told him to stay put while Sami went to grab a water bottle out of his car. Alone again, Dean reached into his pocket and felt the phone there. It definitely was not Dean's phone. He’d never had one of these big rectangular deals with the touch screen, but he knew how to use them. Of course he did, how the fuck else would he have called Sami?

Dean pressed a button on the front and when the screen lit up Ziggler was grinning back at him. There was only one person in the town that Dean knew who would have a picture like that set as their background, and that person was Dolph Ziggler himself. Dean made like he was putting the phone in his back pocket even as he chucked it as far as he could, tossed it out behind him into the scraggly roadside weeds and smiled as Sami handed him the water.

He looked around as he drank, out past Sami, out at the pitch black fields, not really thinking about anything other than how good the water tasted. A memory filtered back to him then, that he had been lying on his mattress and smoking, drifting in and out of consciousness until he had looked down and seen the bright red end of his cigarette glowing in the near dark and. That was when Dean realized where he was and why he had wanted to come here , that he had called because he wanted to show this to Sami.

“It's not that far.” Dean said taking another long drink of water.

“What are you talking about?”

“Where we are now. It's not that far from my place if you're on foot. Two, maybe three miles.” Maybe four, or even closer to five, but really, who was counting? Not Dean. “You just gotta cut out across the. The slews, and the other places where there aren't any roads.”

“Dean.” Sami said, and he didn't have his head down in his hands but he looked like he wanted to. “You can't keep doing stuff like this. What if I had been at work when you called me? I can't -

“I know, Sami. It's okay, I know. I just wanted you to see this.”

“To see what?” Sami resisted at first when Dean nudged at his shoulder, but he eventually sighed and turned around to see what Dean was looking at.

  
If it would have been daylight still they would have easily been able to see the wind farm. Dean loved those fucking wind turbines, loved to get high and watch the big flat blades as they sliced  shivering circles through the air, spun and spun and spun. But it was different, at night. Especially on a night as black as this one where the moon was nothing more than a sliver in the sky. The only part of the turbines that could be seen now were the bright red lights that flashed together in unison. Dozens of red eyes that floated in the darkness, blinking as one.


	2. Blue Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Heath Slater - room for advancement)

There was hardly any room for Heath to stand in little Arby's housekeeping closet, cramped as it was. Shelves of paper towels and chemicals that Waylon would have loved to try and eat. So really, it made sense for him to stand outside the door. And if Zack was standing right there then it would have been rude not to try and make conversation.

“Her eye turned green. _Green_.” Heath shook his head “And I know the doctor said don't worry and I know it won't do no good anyways, but. I just can't help it y’know?”

Heath sighed and thunked his head back against the door frame. He leaned there for a while the bucket filled and waited until Zack finally got around to nodding. Trying to have a real conversation with Zack after his third smoke break of the day was always a struggle. But he was a real good listener.

“Don't get me wrong, I know there's worse things than bein’ blind in an eye. She'd be alright.” Heath turned off the water and started to back the rolling bucket out of the closet “It's not like she was gonna die from it, I just -”

“Ahem.” Alexa had appeared right beside Heath, tapped her foot impatiently as she glared up at him. “Could you move some time before we _all_ die?”

Heath startled at Alexa’s sudden appearance. He was sure that she hadn't been there a second ago, but she made it sound like Heath and the mop bucket had been blocking her path for hours at least.

“I didn't think you were working today.” Heath remarked as he followed her order. Alexa hadn't been on the schedule, and she wasn't the type of person to swing by on her days off just to make sure everything was running okay like Mr. Rhyno did sometimes.Alexa must have been in a good mood because she didn't even kick the mop bucket when one of the wheels got stuck, even though she looked like she wanted to.

Instead, all she said was “I'm not. And by the looks of it you two fuckers aren't working either.”

Then she disappeared back towards Mr. Rhyno’s office. Heath, chastised, got back to work while Zack returned to his deep regard of the drive-thru window and the hot August day outside. It didn't take long for Alexa to reappear. She ignored Heath as she all but skipped out the door, didn't even give him a hard time for mopping too slow. Heath had never seen her in such a good mood before. It left him feeling vaguely unsettled.

Not long after Alexa’s departure, Mr. Rhyno came up to the front of the Arby's. Heath looked up from where he was in the middle of wringing out the mop, smiled for a second before -. He had wanted to ask Mr. Rhyno if they were still on for watching the next episode of Cosmos the that night - the kids had talked about the last one for days - but the look on Mr. Rhyno's face made Heath pause.

“Alexa’s quitting.” Mr. Rhyno seemed stunned, looked down and away from Heath to stare at the paper in his hand. “She just handed in her two weeks notice.”

Mr. Rhyno seemed even more thoughtful than usual when he came over to watch Cosmos that night, and Heath was very careful all night not to ask anything about Alexa quitting. It wasn't easy - Heath was so curious that he could hardly stand it. He wanted to know why she was quitting and who was going to replace her, but. But he didn't want to bother Mr. Rhyno or make him think that Heath was trying to get inside information on account of the fact that they had been hanging out after work more and more.

Things had been good, with him and Mr. Rhyno. Slower than molasses but still good. So instead of being nosy that night he waited until the next day when he was scheduled to work with Alexa to ask her.

“Yeah, I'm going back to college.” She said, busy wiping down the counter after the lunch rush. “Unlike some people I don't want to be slinging roast beef for the rest of my life.”

Heath shrugged. There were worse jobs.

“I like it.”

“You would.” Alexa curled her lip. “Now go check the garbage cans and stop bothering me.”

Heath tried again awhile later. But he maybe shouldn't have waited until Alexa was on break, because she glared daggers at him from the moment he stepped out the back door of the building.

“D’you think they're gonna hire a new assistant manager?” Heath had wanted to casual about it, but like always Alexa seemed to see right through him.

“No. I'm fucking irreplaceable.” Alexa rolled her eyes, which meant yes. "Now do you need something or can I smoke in peace for once in my goddamn life? Go check the corkboard.”

Sure enough, there was a notice on the board in the back next to all the OSHA posters. All current team members were officially encouraged to consider applying for the opening.The Arby's brand prided itself on providing talented employees with room for advancement.

That night Heath stayed up late. He got all the kids tucked in and then he ran the math as best he could with his eyes sliding shut. If he made three more bucks an hour at the Arby's job, working full time, then. It would be good for them. Not enough for Heath to stop working at Wal-Mart altogether, especially since he was going to have to figure out if the raise would affect his SNAP money, but. Maybe it would be enough that he could work a little less at the Wal-Mart during the winter when Kevin always had him out chasing shopping carts in the freezing wind if Heath was more than 30 seconds late to work.

Or… or maybe he could try and work even more at the Wal-Mart. Then he could get caught up on the back rent he owed to his increasingly short-tempered landlord. Maybe he could even get some money saved up so he wouldn't have to scramble the next time something went wrong. Maybe he could go to the dentist and get them to check that achey tooth, maybe he could get better tires put on the van, maybe he could take the kids on a little trip somewhere…

Heath’s head slipped off his hand, startled him back awake. He took a deep breath and rested his forehead the heel of his palm again as he stared down at the page of swimming numbers. He could hear the fridge humming and Waylon breathing soft and steady in his crib by the couch. It lulled him for a second and Heath let his eyes slip shut again so he didn't have to look at all the dishes in the sink while he thought. Heath had to stop getting ahead of himself. It didn't do no good for him to waste time making plans for something that hadn't even happened.

The posting had said experience was the most important requirement, sure, and Heath figured he had plenty of that but Mojo and Zack had both been at the Arby's longer than him and Heath knew they had both at least finished high school. And Mr. Rhyno was great, even aside from being the best boss Heath had ever had. But even though Heath tried his best he still knew that he was far from a model employee.

What if the responsibility was too much? What if, assuming he even got the job, he ended up letting Mr. Rhyno down after he had taken a chance on him? Heath said as much to Dean the next evening. The two of them were leaning on Heath's splintery porch railing as the kids fell all over each other in the small yard. Boomer and Waylon were making dirt pies together in the worst of the patchy areas, the other kids playing a very intense game that seemed to have a lot to do with living under the ocean.

“And you're asking me for advice cause my employment history's so great?” Dean had shown up filthy after a day of working on the road crew, the layer of grime so thick that the more faded of Dean's tattoos were hidden underneath it all. Dean had offered to hook him up with construction jobs before, said that they paid well. But Heath just hadn't been able to make the hours of it work with the kids’ schedules.

“Anyways.” Dean continued, snapping his gum lazily. “Worst thing you could do is not get it. Or get it and fuck it - ouch! - mess it up and end right back where you are now.”

Heath glared back at Dean, but he still had to admit that Dean gave good advice. Dean may have been all corners and no rounded edges but he was a lot smarter than he pretended to be. And he was right - Heath had to at least try.


	3. Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Xavier Woods - game night)

“Where is our wayward brother?” Xavier asked as he kicked his shoes off in the entryway of Kofi’s house. “Where is the Biggest of Es?”

“No clue. He didn't text me to say he'd be late, but you know E -” Kofi had paused stooped down and grabbed his son under the arms, held the babbling kid up above his head for a second. “He probably just had a cow emergency or something. You wanna make some popcorn while I get this guy ready for bed?”

Xavier narrowly avoided stepping on a discarded Thomas the Tank Engine as he grabbed the box of popcorn packets out of the cabinet. Then he got the parmesan cheese from the door of Kofi’s fridge while the second bag spun in the microwave, because if Xavier was going to make the popcorn then he was going to get to choose what he put on it. Except that E showed up right around then and Xavier got distracted, letting the popcorn go a couple seconds too long.

“Shameful.” The scorched smell wasn't even that bad, really, but Big E still shook his head when Xavier pulled the bag open and a slight curl of smoke drifted out. “Shameful, Woods.”

“You're the shameful one.” Xavier dumped entirely too much if the cheese on the popcorn. “Always running late with your cow crisis.”

Kofi had drifted back into the kitchen by then, grabbed a handful of popcorn and made a face at Xavier as he started to chew. Good lord, everyone was a critic. Big E just nodded and shrugged out if his faded canvas jacket, tossed it over the back of one of Kofi’s barstools.

“This town is lucky it even gets to see my shadow right now, you two’re blessed to get to see all this glory live and in person.” E said, gesturing to himself and rolling his hips a couple of times before he grabbed the bowl of popcorn from Kofi and headed for the stairs.

Kofi’s wife went out for ‘Girl's Night’ with her friends every other Friday, so Xavier and Big E would come over to hang out in the basement and play videogames for a couple hours. They could have just done online multiplayer games now that E had gotten internet out at the ranch, but there was nothing like getting to see his friends in person. At least, that's what Xavier said. It was true too, but Xaviers insistence also might have had a little bit to do with the fact that their go-to multiplayer game had been Call of Duty, and Big E was a dirty, no class camper who outranked Xavier’s KD ratio and kept telling everyone on the voice channel that he was going to bench press their coffins.

E fired up the system once they were all downstairs while Kofi set up the baby monitor. They had played nothing but Madden for the longest time, followed a detour through Mortal Kombat, but a month or so back Xavier had finally succeeded in getting his friends hooked on a new game. Bright, candy colored letters wiped across the screen - _Peggle._

“Alright, Bjorn Unicorn. We're coming for you this time.”

They fell into an easy and well honed routine as the game started. Bullshitting with each other, making fun of bad shots, holding their breath each time the screen zoomed in just before they cleared the last peg on a level and got that sweet, sweet Extreme Fever. Eventually the topic of the weekend came up. Big E was still working with his dad on dealing with his Great Uncle’s estate , Kofi was going to take the kid over to visit the grandparents, and

“What about you, Woods?”

“Working on the blog. Dean and I are gonna go wander around out on the old forest service roads and see if we can find anything good.”

Aside from his job at the Wal-Mart electronics section, Xavier made a decent amount of money off freelancing game reviews and the Youtube advertising on his Let's Play channel. All those loyal subscribers really paid off. But the fall before Xavier had started going on long, winding drives just to get a break from all the constant computer time, taking pictures of abandoned homes and the swaying, ramshackle farm buildings that dotted the county. What was the word for Urban Exploration when you lived in a town where the tallest building was a whopping three stories tall? RurEx? Anyways, Xavier hadn't figured out how to monetize that blog yet but he was working on it. It wasn't nearly as popular as playing Dark Souls 3, but -

“Wait. Dean Ambrose?”

“Uh, yeah. Do you know any other Deans?”

“Dean Malenko.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“Yeah, maybe you could try actually hitting more than one peg next time too.” Xavier said “But, no, I'm not hanging out with _Dean Malenko_. Jesus. High school calculus wasn't that interesting.”

“Oh, good. That's good.” Kofi said, in a tone that made it clear he did not actually think it was good “You know I just wanted to make sure you were actually talking about Dean Ambrose. You know, the same guy I saw railing pills with Ziggler outside the laundromat.”

“I don't -”

“Who?” Big E cut Xavier off “Who? Oh, you mean Dean Ambrose! The guy who used to ride around in the clown car stealing street signs? The one whose main claim to fame is that he tried to burn down the finest of all area eating establishments?”

“Yeah, that Dean Ambrose.”

“Good to know, Kof, good to know.”

“Okay, shit, can you just -” Xavier said, but then they hit the Extreme Fever and whatever he had been about to say got lost as they were all distracted by high fiving each other as Ode to Joy rang out.

“Yes!”

“Yes, yes yes!”

“That's how we do it! How's that for more than one peg?”

“Alright, yeah, time to dunk on this cat for real though.”

Xavier had almost fooled himself into thinking that his friends would drop the subject, but no sooner had Kofi loaded the next level than E turned and pinned Xavier with a serious look

“What?” Xavier asked, annoyed. Sometimes Kofi and E acted like he was the little brother despite that fact that all three of them were the same age.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? You're the one looking at me like I just grew an extra head.”

“You know, that woulda been better. If you had an extra head then you might of got an extra brain in there too. No, I just wanted to get one last good look at you before you go to hang out in the middle of nowhere with some felon you barely know.”

“Here lies Xavier Woods!” Kofi leaned forward swept his hand that wasn’t holding the controller out in front of him, as if across the face of an imaginary tombstone. “He died as he lived -”

“How did he live, Kofi?” E asked, grinning, clearly already suspecting the answer even before Kofi said

“A thirsty nerd!”

“Shut _up_ .” Xavier shouldered Kofi, made his mess up his next shot. Kofi immediately retaliated by punching Xavier in the thigh just hard enough to sting. Kofi and E were both laughing as Xavier felt his face heat up. “I don't _not_ know Dean. You two act like you've never met the guy. I know you know him.”

“Yeah, we just established that we all know that he's done time. Yes. Please, continue.” Big E shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth, chewing loud as possible while he stared directly at Xavier.

At least Kofi wasn't staring at him, but Xavier knew that he was not being spared from judgement just because Kofi was engrossed in trying to hit the power up peg as he added “Yeah, I know the guy. That's the whole problem.”

\- and.” Xavier continued, as if they hadn't just talked all over him. “We've hung out a couple of times.”

“Oh really?” Kofi had his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth in concentration as he lined up his next shot “When.”

“Um. At the bonfire.”

“Uh huh. And remind me, E, how long ago was that?”

“It had certainly been a minute.”

Xavier pressed on “He comes around the electronics section to shoot the shit sometimes when I'm working.”

“Okay, nevermind, I take it back then.” Kofi said “You're definitely an expert on Dean Ambrose.”

“By the way, does he even know how to use a computer?” E asked “This relationship is gonna be doomed if your guy doesn't know what a videogame is.”

“Christ, you guys just don't stop do you? Dean and I are just. Hanging. Out. Lay off.” Xavier griped as Kofi cleared another line of pegs off the screen. “You two act like you're worried we're gonna elope and you're gonna get all hurt he didn't come ask your permission for my hand in marriage or something.”

“He’d better ask first though.” Kofi said

E nodded “Only the best for our beautiful son.”

“For Christ's sake. He was just telling me the other day that he knows about all sorts of abandoned buildings out in the country that I haven't gotten pictures of yet. That's it. That's all it is.”

“Oh, so he wants to show off his grow op.” E deadpanned as Kofi failed the level and all the pegs reset.

“Very romantic.” Kofi passed the controller across Xavier to Big E who hunkered down in the couch like he was settling in for a long siege against the Peggle Masters.

“That's not true, come on.”

“Uh huh.”

“Sure.”

“Wait, that he doesn't have a grow op or that it's not romantic?”

“Both.” Xavier rolled his eyes, grabbing for the controller. “Now gimme that thing before we lose. Again.”

E held on tight to the device and stared straight at Xavier, silent with wide eyed mocking as he shot a ball directly into the pit without hitting a single peg.


	4. Further Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Braun Strowman - lunch break)

Braun parked the forklift back in between the yellow lines in the floor, shut it off and hung the keys back on the empty hook on the wall next to the others. He was well on his way to the break room when his supervisor tried to intercept him. At least a foot and a half shorter than Braun, as most people were, he ended up falling behind as he tried to keep up with Braun to ask if Braun could maybe rack a couple more pallets.

Braun stopped. “Alright.”

“Really? So if you could just -”

“After lunch.” Braun took his lunch break halfway through his shift every day that he worked. Even if he was working in the middle of the night he kept to his schedule.

His supervisor had looked like he wanted to say something about it, but in the end he decided against it and walked away, shaking his head. And that had been that. Braun was pretty sure that he thought Braun was too big and dumb to be argued with which. That was half true, maybe, but in the end it all made Braun's life much easier.

The after hours in the cool cavernous warehouse where Braun spent most of his time, the break room was always a little disconcerting - cramped in and too bright under the rows of shining fluorescents in the drop ceiling. It wasn't a very big area, just enough space for three long tables in between the lockers on the one side and the old vending machines humming along the opposite wall. Space was usually at a premium, but third shift was always a little bit quieter. Not by much, granted, but enough to be something closer to what Braun would have preferred.

Some of the younger operations people had the table closest to the door along with one of the welders, a woman with the bright red hair that spoke with her hands and made everyone laugh. The table in the middle had a smaller group of maintenance guys who had piled their gloves and tool belts on the other empty seats, blocking anyone they didn't know from sitting beside them. Braun had never gone to school, as such, but he had been familiar the concept of ‘cliques’ even before he had known that word to call them. People stuck with their own, Braun knew.

Braun personally preferred to eat at the table that was closest to the row of lockers on the wall. That one was almost always empty. Most people didn't like to sit there, because there was a good chance of being hit in the back of the head with a locker door as people came and went. Unless you were Braun. No one had ever so much as brushed his arm on accident, even though he blocked at least six of the lockers whenever he ate lunch.

That night, however, there was already another person sitting there. One of those scientist types who worked at the lab in the corner of the building where Braun never had reason to go. The guy looked up from the book he had been reading when Braun pulled out a chair across and at the other end of the table from him. He smiled and nodded at Braun as if they knew each other.

Then Braun noticed then that there was a neat label stuck on the side of his lunch box. It was the type that had been printed off of a machine, not handwritten in marker like most peoples’ were - like Braun’s was - and it said SAMI ZAYN in raised black letters.

Oh. So Braun actually did know this guy. Well, he didn't know him, exactly. More like Braun knew _of_ him.

A while back everyone at the plant had cycled through the HAZWOPER refresher training. Braun had been in a different group than Zayn, so he hadn't witnessed anything himself. But Zayn had apparently done nothing to endear himself to his coworkers, since he was singlehandedly responsible for the fact that Training Group B hadn’t gotten done with the first portion if the course until three hours after they had been scheduled to stop. Braun had overheard more than once from the other forklift operators that ‘some brown nosing ginger asshole’ had asked questions about every single slide on the PowerPoint while everyone else had been staring at the wall and watching every second of wasted time.

“How's it going?”

Braun blinked, and it took took a second before he realized that Zayn was speaking to him. People at work tended to speak freely in front of Braun, but they rarely spoke directly _to_ him. And definitely not to ask how his day was going. Braun had figured that it was on account of some combination of him being huge, quiet, and well known to be a religious fanatic. Well. Former religious fanatic. But there was no hiding the tattoos on his hands and Braun just let them believe what they wanted.

“Fine.” was all he said in response, once he had figured out that Sami was indeed talking to him. Braun didn't have any personal quarrel with this guy, but he hadn't sat at the emptiest table because he was inclined to make conversation.

Zayn looked at Braun for another moment before he smiled and nodded again,  stilted and awkward, and went back to his book.

At the next table over Chris Jericho was talking about how his band had played up in the city the weekend before. Jericho was one if the guys everyone had to talk to if they needed to check out a ladder or any other piece of company equipment. Braun, not having much need for ladders, had dealt with him only on rare occasions. But even that passing acquaintance was enough for Braun to know that talking loudly about himself seemed to be one of Jericho’s favorite things to do.

“This one lady was totally eyeballing me, man.” It was impossible not to overhear Jericho, but Braun wasn't paying any kind of real attention to him. “But I guess her boyfriend didn't take kindly to that, so we had to go outside and talk about it. I'll tell ya, man, it would've been nice having a guy like him around.”

Braun knew that he was the one being talked about even before Jericho whistled between his teeth - like he was signaling a dog - and called out

“Hey, big guy! Strowman, right? What do you think about music?”

Braun just looked up and stared at him, didn't reply. After a long uncomfortable moment, Jericho shook his head and ate another spoonful of pudding.

“Probably only into that gospel shit.” Jericho muttered.

But Jericho must have been looking to get a rise out of someone, because it didn’t take long for him to redirect his attention to Braun’s tablemate.

“Hey, look who it is.” Jericho drawled out the words as he spoke, letting them stretch and stretch. “What do _you_ think about music Sami Zayn?”

“Me?” Zayn had to twist around in his seat to be able to look at Jericho. He sounded like  he was even more surprised that Jericho was talking to him than Braun had been when Sami had tried to start a conversation with him before.

“Yeah, you.”

Zayn lit up, excited as he said “I love it! I used to be in a band too, with my friends back in highschool! You know, my undergrad major was actually music until -”

“You think that makes you special?” Jericho cut him off.

“No, I -” Zayn hesitated, and Braun could see the confidence go out of him. “I was just saying. Since you asked.”

“That's all it takes to be one of you fancy lab guys, huh?” Jericho grinned, mean. “Some piece of paper that says you know what a chord progression is?”

“Actually, I -”

“Actually you what?” Jericho cut Zayn off. The guy that he was sitting next to nudged Jericho with his shoulder, but Jericho just elbowed him back a little harder. “What? I wanna know what the Sami Zayn _actually_ has to say.”

Zayn rallied a little bit, sat up straighter in his seat as he set his book down on the table in front of him. “I was just going to say that I actually have a Master's in chemistry.”

“Wow! That is just so cool! A _Master's_ in _chemistry_ ! ” Jericho said, rolling his eyes. “You must have pissed someone off again to be working nights, huh? Can't imagine how _that_ happened.”

Sami had gone red across the ears as he glared back at Jericho and muttered something about third shift pay differentials. But Jericho had already got what he wanted and moved on.

“Hey, Strowman. Why’re you even sitting with this brainiac? Are you two on some Freak the Mighty shit?”

Braun looked back over, paused in his eating to stare at Jericho. Jericho kept laughing at his own joke, at first, but when he noticed Braun’s steady gaze he faltered.

“Hey, Strowman, what's your fucking problem? Can't take a joke?”

Braun swallowed and kept staring back at Jericho, unwavering. He smiled then, slow and cold as Jericho grew visibly more uncomfortable and eventually turned back towards his buddies.

“Ha.” Braun said, deep and rumbling. A couple of people had filtered out of the break room since Braun had first sat down to eat, but everyone who was left suddenly seemed to be staring at Braun. Everyone, that was, except for Jericho. He had jerked in his seat as if he had been shocked, but no longer seemed too inclined to look back at Braun.


	5. Gasoline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Mojo Rawley - stay hype)

Mojo’s second favorite thing about working at the Arby's was getting to talk to all the people at the drive through. His third favorite thing was that he could get a vanilla shake and mix it with a bunch Mountain Dew for free. But his first favorite things about working at the Arby's were definitely the shifts that he got to work with his best bro Zack.

Mojo knew that Mr. Rhyno did his best to schedule them in the same shifts, just that it was hard to make the schedule work because Zach had to take his mom to all her doctor's appointments and Mojo always had three or four other part time jobs that he had to schedule around. Mojo could have quit most of them but he liked having things to do and he didn't like sleeping much and he still had plenty of time to stay hype in between jobs. And sometimes even on the job! They didn't care if he wore headphones when he was working at the hog barns or washing dishes! And now he was trying to get into DJ-ing, which would be the hypest job of all time if he could just get a couple of gigs.

So yeah, Zack almost never worked the same shift as Mojo but when they did end up together it was super hype. In fact, Mojo was so hype that day that he didn't even mind that the electronics in his Ford Fiesta were on the fritz again - he could always just play music through the tinny blown out speaker his phone to stay pumped up when he has to stop at stop signs. Mojo was pretty proud of himself for being only fifteen minutes late to work that day. He figured that was mostly because he was so hyped to work with Zack, who fist bumped him as he clocked in.

“Bro!”

“How's it goin’ bro?”

“Awesome, bro!”

“Bro, the hypest thing ever happened last night…”

Everyone always thought that him and Zack lived together, because they were definitely best bros and got hype together all the time. They actually had split an apartment for a while a couple years back. It had been the most hype six months of Mojo’s life until Zack had moved back in with his parents. Mojo had been sad for about a day, but he understood that sometimes bros needed to give bros their own space. That was okay. Mojo did understand, even of he never personally felt like he needed or wanted his own space. But Zack was still his best bro and them not living together just meant that they always had tons of stuff to catch up on whenever they saw each other.

“You know what today is bro?” Zack asked a little while later. 

Mojo had been almost done chugging his Monster Energy, crushed the can against the wall and tried to toss it overhand into the nearest trash can. It bounced off the rim and fell to the floor, leaking bright green liquid as Mojo pulled his phone out of his back pocket 

“It's the 19th!”

“Nah, bro. It's-”

“It is though bro, I just checked!”

“I mean. Yeah, bro, but for you know what else?”

“Nah, bro, I dunno.”

“Bro! It's Heath's first day as Assistant Manager!”

“Bro!”

Alexa had been pretty hype even if she had yelled at everyone a lot. But Alexa was getting to go back to college with her bro which was so hype and so Mojo was hype for her. That had been one of the times Alexa had yelled at him loudest, when they had been on break and Alexa was smoking and Mojo was standing around talking to her and trying to borrow a smoke. Apparently they weren't girlfriends, they were just bros, which was still so hype. And Heath getting that promotion was even more hype!

“Hey bro!” Mojo said when he passed Heath on his way to the drive through window “Congrats on becoming the new ass man!”

Heath didn't laugh. Instead he mostly just looked nervous, which made Mojo falter.

“Uh. Get it? Ass man, like assistant manager?”

“Yeah.” Heath said. “Thanks, Mojo.”

One of Mojo’s other jobs was babysitting for Heath's brother Hayden. He had offered to babysit for Heath too, and teach his kids all the important stuff like how to shout real loud without losing your voice and how to get skunk spray out of your hair by cutting it all off. But Heath had declined. Now Heath was his boss anyway and that was super hype even if it meant Heath might not be able to play around with the Garbage Chucking Olympics anymore now that he was an ass man.

Later, when Mojo was on break, he went out to stand by the dumpsters with his phone blasting music while he smoked the last of Alexa’s cigarettes. She must have forgotten that she had hidden them from him in the cubby above the drink machines, or. Or maybe Alexa just hadn't bothered to come back and get them since she was so excited to leave. Mojo thought that smoking them for her was kinda like pouring one out for a dead homie. Except that Alexa wasn't dead. She just didn't work there anymore because she had moved on the more hype things like living with her bro. But Mojo hadn’t. Mojo still worked at Arby's, so he got the smokes. Or something like that. 

Before Mojo could think too hard about it Zack texted him a selfie from inside where he was training the new high school kid on the registers and Mojo texted back a bunch of ‘100’ and fist bump emojis and then the next song that came on his shuffle was hype so Mojo tried to turn the volume up on his phone since he always forgot that he had the volume maxed and when Mojo looked back up he saw that Heath had come out the back door of the Arby's to stand next to him.

“What's up bro?”

“Sorry you didn't get the job.” Heath said, talking over the music and looking down at his ground even though there wasn't anything hype down there besides some little black ants.

“Oh, hey, thanks bro! I know it's hard to break into the DJ business, but I'm not gonna give up!”

“What?”

“Yeah, the principal said they didn't want the middle school getting too hype at the winter formal? They asked me to tune down my playlist and I said no way, bro, I can't calm down the hype, bro, and then they told me they'd just get someone else! It's cool though!”

“Uh. No, I meant this job.” Heath flicked his name tag and stared at Mojo “You know, since I'm the new assistant manager.”

“Yeah! You're gonna be an awesome ass man, bro! But no way, bro, what're you talking about? I didn't apply for that.”

“Really?” Heath seemed surprised for a second, which Mojo didn't really understand. “Was it because Zack applied?” 

“Yeah! And no! Zack didn't want the job either. Too much responsibility, bro! But bro, I'm really hyped for you! Just don't get mad at me for drinking all the Mountain Dew. Gotta stay hydrated bro!”

The sun had started to set when Mojo pounded another Monster in the parking lot after his shift ended at the Arby's. In fact, the sun was burning close enough to the horizon that the floppy shades in his car couldn't block it and the bright yellow light lanced right into Mojo’s eyes as he drove. Mojo couldn't get too mad at the sun for staying hype though. Mojo’s phone dinged as he grabbed one of the seven pairs of sunglasses scattered around his dashboard, low battery alert, and Mojo blew right through a stop sign as he tried to get it plugged in.

Mojo’s charging cable was so frayed that it was really just life support, didn't actually charge so much as it extended whatever was left, but Mojo didn't think about that. He was too busy staying hype and trying not to miss his turn off onto the gravel road that would take him out to the hog barns. It wasn't until he saw the big dead tree on the side of the road that Mojo realized that he had already overshot his turn. This always happened, even though Mojo had been making the same drive multiple times a week for a year now. He pulled a U-turn in the middle of the empty highway and the sun was suddenly at his back, the shadow of the little Ford Fiesta like a long black railroad spike in front of him and Mojo got so distracted thinking about how hype it would be to be a train conductor that he almost blew through the same stop sign again.

When Mojo finally got to the hog barns he found out that today was going to be even more hype than he had thought. Because today was the day that Mojo got to go around the pens and catch the little pigs that hadn't grown enough so that they could get their booster shots!  A couple of months back Mojo had helped pull one of them out since it had gotten stuck being born and the piglet had nibbled on Mojo’s fingertips with it's tiny teeth before he had even managed to get it out of it's mom. That had been so hype!  The pigs usually grew really fast, but there were always runts that fell behind. Mojo liked helping the little pigs, with their soft ears and big eyes, and he hated having to throw them out in the dumpster if they died. 

Mojo pulled on his muck boots and went out into the box stalls, had to pause for a couple seconds when he was ankle deep in pigs so that he could shuffle through a couple of songs on his phone to find something so hype that he wouldn't be able to think about anything. As long as he kept busy and had his music blasting, as long as he stayed hype, it was easy for Mojo not to think about all the small things that had ever existed that had been born just to die. Because when he was hype he didn't have to worry about thinking about the little pigs with their curious eyes and how in the end they were all just meat. About how, in the end, Mojo and everyone he loved would be nothing but meat.

That was why Mojo always brought his headphones when he went to work at the hog barns! That was why he had meant to remember to buy a new charger for his car! Except that. He had forgotten what he was supposed to get once he was at Wal-Mart and bought the new Scooby-Doo movie instead, hadn't he? But Mojo was sure that the 7% charge he had left would last for the next few hours no problem!


	6. See A Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Luke Harper - processing game)  
> warning: mild animal gore

There were outbuildings scattered all around the Compound, more than they needed now that their numbers had dwindled. A slow decline as the old folks were called home to the kingdom and some of the younger ones turned their back on the Word. The outbuilding that Luke was standing before was little more than a  whitewashed shed, decorated with the faded black warnings that hell was hot and eternal, about ten foot on a side. It was there that Luke had first learned to use a knife and it was more familiar to him than his own heart. 

Luke stepped in across the threshold, out of the sun and into the dim interior. Raw board walls and a packed dirt floor under his boots, weak winter sunlight filtering in through the low rafters from the caved in corner of the roof that Luke hadn't gotten around to repairing. 

He looked down at the deer carcass, still freshly dead enough that Luke could feel the body heat through his gloves when he touched the curved ribcage. It didn’t have the giving, fractured feeling like they got when they had been struck by a car, but. There weren't any shot holes either. It didn’t matter. One way or another the animal was dead, it's blank black eyes looked like they would be soft to the touch, almost velvety.

But Luke did not touch the deer’s eyes. He lashed it to the gambrel bar instead, one sharp ankle at each end, tied tight to keep the legs separated as he tossed the rope over the roof beam and hoisted the carcass so that the nose hung well above the packed dirt. There was a thick blue plastic tub in the corner that he kicked over to catch the blood that dripped from the open mouth of the animal, not needing the ground to become sticky with blood or to attract any more flies in the summer than it already did. Then Luke stripped his gloves off and tossed them to the side, pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up above his elbows as he considered the animal. 

If he were field dressing the deer Luke would have had to cut out the ass and spill the streaming entrails and he could see it, in his mind, the bloody mess that would gather in the catch bucket. Ropy intestines curled around the smooth dark curve of the liver, the heart encased in its sac, the pale lungs and the gritty windpipe that he would reach in and rip out. But here in the cold privacy of the shed he could skin the buck and cut the meat away while leaving the body cavity intact. It was cleaner that way.

The short curved blade of the knife was sharp when Luke tested it against the hair on the back of his arm, clean when he started even though it wouldn't stay that way for long. He removed the front legs first so that they wouldn't get in the way. Skin and muscle sliced easily under edge of the knife, bright bones that snapped with quick loud cracks to reveal the raw red marrow inside before Luke dropped them down into the bucket. There was a chop saw, hanging on a nail on the wall, but Luke had not touched that in years. It was quicker to break the bones off by hand.

Luke started skinning at the ankles, keeping the hide drawn tight so that it was easier to cut. It came away easy enough once he had loosened the flaps, and he didn't need to do much more than guide the separation with the edge of the blade. The slick white underside of the skin peeled back inches at a time to expose the meat underneath. Soon enough he had the skin turned completely inside out and hanging down around the neck and over the head of the deer, hiding those soft eyes. He had only just started to cut the long curve that would separate the meat from first shoulder when he heard someone speak to him.

“Is he in pain?” a woman asked, and she sounded distraught with it. She sounded like Luke’s mother. When he turned around to the door behind him no one was there, but -

Luke stood there for a moment, knife in hand, breathing very hard. The world outside of the door was. Bright. Brighter than Luke had ever seen it before. Every blade of grass, every bit of gravel in the driveway stood out so pure and sharp. As Luke looked across the empty yard he could see the delicate patterns of the faded lace curtains that hung in the window. He could see each individual square in the mesh of the screen door. All of the Compound was visible with a clarity so perfect that Luke was startled by it. He could see the bluejays and cardinals flitting between the branches of a tree, in and out of glowing green leaves, and it was as if he could see the edge of every feather ruffle where the air caught them.

It looked like it was the middle of summer out there. But Luke’s hands - one curled around the handle of the knife, one still bracing the carcass of the deer - were freezing cold. His toes were numb in his boots. The tip of his nose and the skin of his cheeks above his beard were tingling and tight. He was so cold that he was sweating, could feel the beads of it that traced down down the back of his neck but he couldn't wipe them away.

Luke blinked at the bright day outside the door once, twice, and then he turned back to the deer. His breath steamed out the air in front of him. He was either having a vision like Bray talked about or he had started getting high, again, maybe, but neither one of those was a good reason to let meat go to waste.

When he turned back to the deer, he could still hearing the woman, his mother, her voice wavering as she asked again “Please, tell me. Is he in pain?”

“It can't feel nothing.” Luke muttered,gritting his teeth as he wrenched the lean shoulder free from the carcass. “It’s dead. Now leave me alone.”

He removed the other shoulder, scored the two long lines down the spine to cut off the back straps. Luke was slow and steady as he broke what was left of the animal down into its component parts, the cold cracking the air around him, burning and sharp. The were big white flakes that drifted down through the caved in roof of the shed, down from that dark sky, too big to be snow. They weren't cold and they weren't hot either, even though they broke apart against Luke’s skin like the big drifting ashes that came from burning sheets paper.

He brushed them away with dirty hands that smeared streaks of blood across his own arms, and when he looked up again he was standing in front of the outbuilding. He had painted it himself, again and again, making fresh and new what the sun had faded. But he knew that it would be dark, inside that shed, and cold.

Luke stepped in across the threshold.


	7. Deck the Halls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Ric Flair - holiday spirit)
> 
> Warning: Ric Flair

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Slick Ric’s Sex Pit, and Ric himself was positively bubbling with holiday spirit as he unloaded the last tote of decorations out of the back of his van. Ric was still a little grunpy that the Chamber of Commerce still wouldn't lift the ban and let him officially participate in the town's Best Decorated Business contest. But he wasn't about to let that stop him from going all out. As far as Ric was concerned, he had been the unofficial winner every year regardless of the actual popular vote.

Because really, who could compete with having a bunch of tiny Santa hats that fit perfectly on the tips of all the display dildos? There was mistletoe to hang up over by the rental DVD’s, a couple of those animatronic reindeer that were meant to go outside and would have to be assembled before Ric could hang bondage gear from the antlers.

Baron was going to love that - Ric’s favorite employee had a great sense of humor.

Technically Baron was Ric’s favorite employee by default since he was the only person who worked at the store other than Ric. Ric hadn't bothered to hire replacements when his other part time employees as they had quit The Pit over time. He had decided to just make Baron full time instead - Ric had always intended to keep The Pit a family business. Charlotte had repeatedly made clear that she had no interest in the future of the crown jewel of her father's businesses, but that was alright. These days Baron was more of a family member than just an employee.

Hell, Baron had even been offering to work weekends since his accident. But Baron was a young guy in the prime of his life, and a real ladies’ man. Ric would never have dreamed of making him work on the most prime of pick-up nights. Besides. Ric liked being able to come in on the weekends and have the place to himself, to research new inventory and plan the best ways for Baron to rearrange the displays. Variety was the spice of life, and he knew that Baron agreed. Sometimes he would catch Baron just staring off at the wall shelves, and Ric knew that Baron was just planning new and exciting ways to promote the merchandise.

So Ric knew that Baron would have been more than happy to help decorate the shop for Christmas, but Ric wanted to surprise him this year. He'd first had the idea that day after Thanksgiving when he had been unpacking all of his holiday decor, wrestling all the totes down from the attic and admiring his expansive collection.

Usually Ric kept most of his own personal pad looking very chic - lots of black and white and chrome, modern and sleek and with a huge glass table in the dining room that was perfect for setting out large spreads of food when it wasn't just being used for other spreading activities. The only exception was the master bedroom, which Ric had set aside as an altar to satin and sequins and feathers and everything that made him want to _woooo_! It wasn't the only room in the house with mirrors on the ceiling, but it was definitely Ric’s favorite.

However that all changed when Christmas rolled around.

Out came the inflatable snowmen and the plastic penguins and all of the twinkling lights. Ric had even bought a little doo-hickey from China that would synchronize his light display to his two favorite seasonal songs. It had been worth every cent, even though he'd had to turn off the speakers after the first night his grinch neighbors had complained about listening to ‘ _Santa Baby’_ and ‘ _Baby It's Cold Outside_ ’ on repeat all night. And the inside if the house was even more of an extravaganza - there was a tree in every room, ornaments and tinsel and pine scented candles setting the mood, not to mention the all of the stockings and fake poinsettias and, most importantly of all, the legs.

Just about every horizontal surface in his home had a mannequin leg displayed on it. There was a leg on every end table, two flanking the fireplace, even more balanced on the TV and on the top of the toilet tanks. Because for about a decade, Ric had been collecting mannequin legs to decorate his house for the holidays and his collection had finally swollen enough that he had to take some of them to The Pit to display.

Ric had been in the smut peddling business for long enough that he had a highly detailed and catalogued understanding of all of his own fetishes and he knew - no matter what people may have thought - that there was nothing sexual about his love of the legs. They were shapely enough, sure, but it wasn't about that. It seemed pretty obvious to Ric that it was just a way for him to display his love of the A Christmas Story movie. The legs were an innocent and well loved tradition that had simply metastasized over the years. Of course Ric’s legs were all decorated with much fancier stockings than the one in the movie. But that was just because getting to dress them up was half the fun.

The other half was getting to see the joy on Baron's face when Ric had him and Charlotte over for Christmas dinner. Ric would say “Caught you staring at my gams, Baron!” and Baron would just keep staring, silent, and Ric would laugh. Oh, how he'd laugh. The holidays were all about spreading joy, after all.

Which was the main reason why Ric had decided to relocate a few fine specimens from his leg collection to The Pit. He could have found homes for them in his house but wasn't it better to let them be enjoyed by others? Baron loved the legs and Ric knew it, even if he sometimes pretended to be impervious to their irresistible charm. Ric thought that Baron had seemed happier since Ric had given him the neon sign, but Baron was like a son to him - Ric could tell that he was still down in the dumps about something.

Luckily Ric knew just the trick to get Baron's good spirits back. With all the joy that the legs had brought Ric over the years, it only seemed fair that he pass some of them on to his favorite employee. After all, giving was it's own reward.


	8. Small Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Randy Orton - traffic stop)

Randy had spent most of his morning out on the Wyatt property, and talking to Bray had been an exercise in frustration. Like trying to squeeze blood from a mentally unhinged stone. Nothing but rapid fire nonsense about demons and angels and offers to baptize Randy in the blood of the righteous. Randy had passed on that, but he still left feeling fuzzy headed and overheated and frustrated that he was no closer to finding anything than he had been before wasting four hours chasing his tail in crazy town. It wasn't his fault that one of their dumb asses had got his head caved in, but he still had to deal with it. All part of the job. 

So seeing that crappy van roll through the stop sign had been the best part of Randy’s entire day so far. A couple streets down from the shittier of the town’s two trailer parks, so maybe it would get interesting or maybe it would just be a nice, routine traffic stop to ease Randy’s mind. 

“License, registration, and proof of insurance please.” 

Randy stood just to the rear of the driver’s window, a position that meant he wouldn’t be hit if the guy suddenly threw the door open. It also meant that the driver was forced to turn slightly to look at Randy as he handed over his documentation. This driver seemed a little more nervous than innocent people normally were when Randy pulled them over. Could have been that he was just worried about all the kids in the back of the van getting restless, could have been that he had something to hide. Well. All in good time.

When Randy gave the license a glance he actually recognized the last name first. Slater. There were a couple of families around the county like that, people too poor and ignorant to know that they should have been ashamed of themselves. Randy did actually remember Heath from school, but those memories were vague. He knew Heath mainly as the guy who had dropped out after sophomore year to marry a chick who'd probably been knocked up by someone else. And now it looked like he had squirted out a bunch more kids of his own for no apparent reason other than to prove that he could or to be a drain on the welfare system.

“Alright, Mr. Slater. Are these your children that are you’re transporting today?”

“They're all mine.” Slater said, hands fidgeting on the wheel as he turned back towards Randy “They're all wearin’ their seatbelts.”

Randy narrowed his eyes behind his aviator shades as he looked through the side window at the pack of little kids watching him from the back of the van. “Do they not normally?”

“No!” Slater said, seemed to go pale in the early afternoon sun. “I mean, yes? I always make sure that they're buckled up, I. Just figured that you might wanna know but you might not be able to see all of ‘em.”

“Hmph.” Randy made a low noise under his breath. “And where were you all headed today?”

“Well, it's the last weekend before they drain the pool so we were gonna go swimmin’, and then we're gonna go over to my mom’s place for supper.”

Definitely not too bright, Randy mused. He almost liked it better when suspects were tight-lipped and withholding. Made it more fun getting the truth out of them. But Randy could tell that Slater was going to be the type to jabber on and on, which tended to get old very fast.

“And what part of that was so important that you couldn't come to a complete stop at that stop sign?”

There was a long moment, then, where the only sound Randy could hear the hot engine of the van ticking as it cooled. He could feel the slight breeze on the short hairs at the back of his neck, and he could see Slater’s eyes go wide, and. He couldn't smell the fear, not exactly, but he imagined that he could taste it when Slater finally said

“I thought I did.”

Randy shook his head, slow and solemn. “Did you really think that? Because from where I was watching it looked like you barely even tapped the brakes before you rolled right through.”

That was maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Randy had watched the shitty van slow almost completely. But ‘almost’ wasn't good enough and Slater seemed to know it, hanging his head a little as Randy walked back to his cruiser so that he could sit in the air conditioning and let Slater stew for a little bit while he ran his information.

Unlike all the shit with the Wyatts, Slater was a problem that Randy could solve, could even choose what degree he wanted to solve it to.

Sure, Randy already had Slater on the rolling stop but it didn't seem like enough. There weren’t any warrants out on this Slater when Randy ran his name, and Randy knew that if he searched the vehicle and found something then he was going to have to call social services and deal with that fucking pack of kids while he waited for them show up. No way. Randy didn't get paid nearly enough to deal with that shit. Lucky for Randy, he barely had to snoop at all to find something else to write this deadbeat up on. 

“This is your most recent insurance card?” Randy asked when he walked back up to the driver's side of the vehicle, holding it out between two of his fingers like a cigarette. He had expected Slater to take it and double check, but instead the guy nodded instantly.

“Yeah. I have the old ones somewhere around here too, Boomer, can you -”

The boy in the front passenger seat reached out and opened the glove compartment. A bunch of the shit in there tumbled out onto his lap and Randy watched the mess with a shrewd eye. He’d been waiting to catch a glimpse of drug paraphernalia, but all he saw was regular junk - a pair of children’s sunglasses with one of the lenses missing, some little travel packs of tissues, a tattered book that might have been the owner's manual, and a whole bunch of loose papers that fluttered as they scattered off the kid’s knees and down into the footwell.

“No.”Randy shook his head, curt, and rolled his eyes behind his aviators as the boy reached forward to start collecting the papers. “No, I'm more concerned about the fact that this card expired a month ago.”

“What?” Slater seemed genuinely shocked, which only meant that he had plenty of experience lying. He finally took the paper back from Randy, eyes scanning frantically over the dates. “No, I always pay that, I…”

Randy knew that it was in his own best interest to let Slater take his time and figure out how deep of a hole he wanted to dig for himself. In the back of the van he could see the little kids starting to get antsy, shifting back and forth and darting glances at him as they whispered amongst themselves. 

“I know that I paid it.” Slater said finally. “I just, must have forgot... I got a promotion at work around then, so -”

“That's great. Good for you.” Randy cut him off in the least congratulatory tone he could manage, didn't miss the way Heath flinched “But I don't see what that has to do with anything.”

“I was just really busy, there was a lot of stuff going on and I must have forgotten to put the new one in here.”

“Well, that was your responsibility. And now I don't have any proof that this vehicle is insured.” Randy said, and Slater’s eyes went wide as Randy continued  “So in addition to the failure to stop I'm going to have to write you up for driving uninsured. But if you really do have insurance then you need to go into the DMV and show them some documentation.”

“Okay, I can do that. I could even call 'em right now and they coule tell you that-” 

“Excuse me.” Randy looked down over the tops of his aviators “I wasn't done.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Now. Like I was saying.  _ If _ you can go in before next week and show proof that you're insurance hasn't lapsed, then you can get your driver's license reinstated. But you'll still have to pay for the moving violation and failure to provide documentation.”

Slater’s heas hung doen as he looked at the tickets that Randy had passed over, but then his eyes snapped up. “Wait, what do you mean reinstated?” 

Randy nodded, a slow smile creeping across his face. “Your license will be suspended from now until the insurance issue is resolved, Mr. Slater. So you're going to have to call someone to come pick all of you up. You know it's not legal to drive an uninsured vehicle. Very irresponsible. With all those kids? Just imagine if something had happened.”


	9. Lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose, Xavier Woods - condemned)

The first things Xavier and Dean had found were a couple of swaybacked sheds, almost on accident. Xavier had wanted to pull over to check his forest service map and Dean had looked over and seen them, leaning ruins that were just shades of brown hidden in the brushy area off the side of the road.

The little buildings looked like a stiff breeze could have been the final death of them. The empty doors and windows had probably been square back before Dean had been born, but they had long since degraded into twisted trapezoids. There was a fencepost along the road, right next to where Xavier had parked, that had a No Trespassing sign stapled to it and a second, faded flyer beneath. Dean had to get right down in front of that one to read it since the flyer had been bleached by the elements for so long that the once bold black letters was only barely been legible.

CONDEMNED. Yeah, Dean had thought. No shit.

Xavier had wanted to go inside one of the sheds to take pictures and Dean had followed along behind, over the barbed wire fence and through the thick brush, twigs snapping sharp and dry under his boots. Inside the shed was a splintery boarded floor that had been grown through with pale weeds, crumpled beer cans piled up just inside the leaning doorframe, a scattering of crunchy brown leaves. Dean had been looking up through the gaps in the roof boards, watching the clouds drift by when he had heard the little electronic chime of Xavier’s camera. He glanced over just in time to catch Xavier taking his picture.

Dean had grinned at him then, reached out and poked at one of the supporting timbers. Xavier had jumped about two feet straight up in the air when the wood had creaked.

Xavier had shown Dean a bunch of the pictures from his website thing before, so Dean understood the point of the whole exercise even if he hadn't exactly understood the appeal until then. To be honest, Dean had thought that the whole ‘hey let's go look for abandoned buildings’ was really just an excuse to drive somewhere and have sloppy make outs in a car.

He told Xavier as much, once they were back in the car.

Dean had been picking burrs off of his jeans, lazily flicking them out the window. The angle of the late afternoon sun coming in from behind Xavier meant that Dean saw him mostly in outline, pink and gold around the edges. So Dean couldn’t make out many details, but it was clear enough that Xavier suddenly seemed much more intent on staring at something on his camera’s display screen. Little beeping noises the only sound between them as Xavier fiddled with some of the buttons until he finally said

“H-ha, really. I, uh -”

“Or not, dude, it’s fine. My bad.” Dean shrugged, watching Xavier not watch him until Xavier finally glanced up.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d. I mean. I’d hoped, maybe, but I didn’t think…”

“Hoped, huh?" Dean squinted at him, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a smile as Xavier squirmed. “Just lemme know what you’re thinkin’ later, yeah? We still got plenty of daylight left. I said I’d find you some cool old abandoned shit, yeah?

The only problem was, Dean had talked a big game without ever thinking he would have to back it up. And then he had doubled down on it. They had gone further from town than Dean ever walked on his own, so now he was riding shotgun, handing half out the window and trying to spot anything that looked familiar. It was harder than he'd thought it would be to remember all the busted old houses that he had snuck around with Roman and Seth, looking for places to get wasted back in the days before he could just get fucked up in the safety and comfort of his own home. How hard could it be to find something?

Pretty hard, it turned out.

Out away from town the deer were bold, out grazing along the shoulders of the gravel roads even though the sun hadn't really even started to set. Fuzzy yearlings with tails that flickered as they bounded away through the high grass and into the trees when they were startled by Xavier’s car. If it would have been hunting season then Dean might have needed to worry about getting shot at by hunters, but they had gone a long way back on the forest service roads, miles and miles and miles without seeing anyone at all.

“Yeah, turn here. By that fucked up tree.”

“Here?” Xavier eased the car to a slow stop, but didn't turn. They were far enough back in the county roads that they didn't have to worry about traffic. Dean would have bet money that they could have stayed parked in the middle of the gravel for an hour without having another car come up on them. “It's just a two track.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Look how tall the grass is on the sides. It doesn't look like anyone ever comes back here.”

“Didn't you say you wanted to look around abandoned houses? That's a good sign man, means it'll be really abandoned. Trust me.”

Dean wasn't so sure Xavier actually should have trusted him. Now that he really looked at it, those wheel ruts looked deep enough that he was starting to vaguely worry about Xavier’s little car getting stuck but. No turning back now. He was pretty sure they were on the right track anyways.

It went for a ways after Xavier had turned down the old two-track, but then the road ended abruptly. The wheel ruts were clear one instant and then there was only a shaggy yellow field stretching out beyond them. There had been more trees along the gravel road, but once the two-track ended there was just a wide expanse of grass and low, scrubby shrubs up until another stand of trees sprung up, sheltering the house in the distance.

“See?” Dean nudged Xavier with his shoulder. “Pretty cool shit, huh?”

“Yeah, Dean, holy crap! I can't believe I didn't know this was here!”

The old farmhouse was bigger than most houses in town, or at least in the parts of town that Dean frequented. It had probably been a nice place to live before it had been abandoned for years. There had once been a wrap around porch encircling the house, now a tilting ramshackle death trap, and pink paint that had probably been cheery before it had faded and flaked. Most of the windows on the first floor had been boarded over but there were a few on the second floor and a circular one on the attic level that were nothing more than dark, gaping holes in the face of the house. There had been two chimneys, but one had cracked broken - Dean figured that if they walked around the backside of the building they would probably still find the bricks, piled up where they had fallen after sliding off the roof.

Dean got up out of the car, fished his cigarettes out of his pocket while Xavier checked some shit on his camera. Or at least that's what he had thought Xavier was doing until he heard the little chime again and looked up to see Xavier still looking down the lens.

“Did you just take my picture again?”

“I mean. I took a picture of the house and you were in it. I was just checking the focus, I can delete it if you want.”

“S’alright, I don't care.” Dean shrugged. There was a joke in there, about how Dean hadn't ever had his picture taken this much outside of mug shots. But Dean just grinned instead and they took off towards the house.

For part of the way they were able to stick to a little game trail, grass worn down to the packed grey dirt. But then the trail veered off and they agreed to cut straight across the field instead. Xavier stopped every once in a while to snap some pictures, high grass brushing up to the knees of their jeans as Dean kept an eye out for snakes.

It turned out that the ground wasn't as flat as it had seemed from a distance. After Dean and Xavier turned off of the little trail they had to slow down considerably, picking their way across the uneven field as the setting sun painted the sky above them. A couple of black billed magpies flushed up from a low lying spot, and Xavier and Dean stopped to watch the birds for a second as they glided away, patches of white feathers in the bodies stark against the nearly iridescent black of their tails.

“At first I thought the focus really had been messed up though.” Xavier said, almost more to himself than to Dean as the magpies fluttered and landed. “Because your tattoo was so blurry. But then I checked and I realized that's just how it - sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean -”

Dean just laughed. To be fair, Xavier could have been talking about any number of Dean’s tattoos.

“Yeah? Which one?”

“The. I think it's supposed to be an alien. Cause that's the little flying saucer, right?” Xavier reached out, hesitant for a second before he tapped on the side of Dean’s arm. “I just can't tell what it's supposed to be doing.”

“That one’s, uh. Fuckin’, I dunno, It's either smoking a blunt or throwing up a peace sign.” Dean twisted to look down at the ink on his arm as they started walking again. “Can't honestly remember.”

They had gotten close enough to the house that Dean was certain he hadn't actually been here before. He’d just gotten lucky picking random roads. Except, now, there was a creeping feeling in Dean's spine that made him wonder if ‘lucky’ was really the right word. He had sort of wanted to see if he could climb up the side of the house onto the porch roof and get in through one of those busted out windows, but as they got closer Dean started to reconsider that plan.

There was a huge trash mound off to the side of the decaying building, almost hidden in the shelter trees. As they got closer Dean noticed that the plants all died as they approached where the garbage had been piled, going from green and yellow grasses to sparse, cracked patches of dirt. And it was starting smell sort of weird - _sick,_ in a way that Dean couldn't quite put his finger on.

Everything would have been silent except for the birds and the grasshoppers if Xavier wouldn't have been keeping up his running commentary. Xavier liked to talk a lot about the things that he liked - most of which was stuff that Dean didn't have a lot of experience with, video games and recording equipment and comic books, but most of the time it was good. Except now Dean couldn't pay attention past the way instincts were clawing for him to remember something that he just couldn't pin down. It also meant that Xavier was a little distracted, rambling about what shots he wanted to get and whether or not there would be any cool stuff inside. It meant that Xavier didn't see the propane tanks hidden in the grass until he was already tripping over them.

“Oh, sh -”

“Fuck!” Dean reached out without thinking about it, cigarette falling out of his mouth as he caught Xavier by the elbow and stop him from falling flat on his face or busting the camera or something.

The dry grass had started to smoke almost as soon as the butt landed and Dean ground it out under his heel as he stared down at the propane tanks. They didn't really look to be in that bad of shape except for the way that the valve stems had started going green and that wasn't. That wasn't right, and suddenly Dean felt his guts go cold and his skin start to crawl.

The sick smell of the place that Dean hadn't been able to put his finger on. The way that all the plants had died out around that garbage pile. The twitchy guy who had been on the same cell block as Dean for a while, who had talked about getting picked up for stealing anhydrous ammonia and the way that it would make the metal stems would turn greenish on the propane tanks that he used to take it. Konnor and Viktor had told him the same thing, once or twice.

“I don't think we should get any closer.” Dean muttered as he belatedly let go of Xavier’s elbow.

“Alright.” said Xavier, unworried and smiling down at where Dean had caught him. “This is a good spot, I can just.get some pictures from back here and -”

“Nah, man.” Dean shook his head. It didn’t look like anyone had been here in a very long time, but. “I really think we should go.”


	10. Distant Stations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Chad Gable - spring)

The geese were headed north again, long ragged V’s that struggled against a sky that looked lower than normal. The pale blue could barely peek through where it was packed with heavy white clouds that were constantly being pulled away by the wind, long before they could even start to think of rain. Or snow. The new green leaves budding out on the trees were hopeful, but Chad had a feeling that winter wasn't quite done with them yet.

An old boat of a Buick parked at pump number three, and Chad watched through the window as the old lady inside climbed out and walked very carefully across the parking lot. For the first time in a while there wasn't any ice to worry about, but the straight-line winds from the west were going full force. She looked like she was going to blow away, her white hair going everywhere as she leaned against the wind. Chad hurried out from behind the counter to hold the door open for her. If the wind ripped it out if her hands and slammed her with it Chad would probably end up calling the paramedics, which already happened more frequently than he cared to at this gas station.

He had picked up an extra shift at the liquor store the night before and his ribs hurt even worse than they normally did since he hadn't gotten much of a break from the binder, a deep ache as he tried to hold the door firm against the wind. Luckily once the old lady saw him there she hustled to get inside, so at least Chad didn't have to fight the elements for too long.

“Oh, thank you.” She blinked at him as the door swung shut behind her, blocking out the wind.

The noise level in the store dropped immediately and Chad could hear Jimmy Buffett crooning away in the background. Chad knew the time then without having to check. ‘Margaritaville’ played at exactly the same time every day, once every three hours, no matter what Chad and JJ did to try and rig the sounds system to play something, anything, other than the crappy piped in music. And they had tried everything.

“Not a problem. Can I help you with anything?”

“Yes, actually.” She dug in her purse, presumably for her wallet, as Chad stepped behind the counter to get ready to ring her up for gas, but before she set the money down on the counter she paused. Looked like she was going to break up for a second before she said “My husband died.”

“Oh.” Chad said. He always prided himself on being good with people but he had no idea how he was supposed to help her with that. It was a little out of his usual customer service wheelhouse. “I'm sorry.”

“He would always bring the money in to pay, and I would always pump.” The lady said as she sat her wallet down. “I don't -. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, now.”

“I'm sorry.” Chad said again, at a loss. She nodded, didn't make any move to leave, and Chad got the impression that the ‘not knowing what she was supposed to do now’ extended far beyond basic gas station transactions, which this lady actually seemed to have handled despite her claims. “How did you meet him? Your husband, I mean.”

“Oh!” She seemed surprised by the question, but more than happy to talk. “Well I was working on a fishing boat up in Alaska and he…”

After Alice eventually left the 7-11 was empty for a while, just a few cars pulling through the pumps without anyone bothering to come inside. Once Chad had cycled the hot dogs he took the lull as an opportunity to flip through his study book behind the register, one eye on the window to make sure no one drove off from the pumps without paying. Chad really wasn't studying for his electrician apprenticeship test so much as he was trying to get a jump start on some of the more advanced stuff he would have to learn later.

He was still going to have to pass the test first, of course, but it wasn't like he had any doubts about that. Of course he was going to pass. JJ was going to pass too, with flying colors and then they were going to get paid apprenticeships and join the union. Chad was going to miss his favorite customers, sure, but he and JJ had bigger plans than working paycheck to paycheck and picking up whatever awful shifts they could for the rest of their lives.

Mojo rolled up a while later and Chad had to stash the book away. He shoved it under the counter only seconds before it would have been buried under the pile of energy drinks that Mojo had retrieved from the cooler. Chad made a mental note to restock as he scanned can after can. He had talked to Mojo before about how it would have been cheaper to buy them in bulk at Walmart, had gotten an _‘oh man that's so hype bro’_ in response, and then Mojo had been back two days later. Mojo was a fun guy, but a little bit of him went a long way. Which was why Chad said he wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it when Mojo reminded him about the outstanding invitation to come over and party and play video games and get hype at  any time.

It wasn't long after Mojo left, probably already late for whichever job he was supposed to be going to, that the guy came in.

Chad had been up on the step stool, restocking the cartons of chew in the display case when the door chimed, opened behind his back to let the wind blow in for a second before shutting again. Chad climbed down, ribs complaining, and watched as the guy wandered up and down the candy aisle.

Chad had always had a great memory, but he’d also been working customer service jobs for a long time. Too long for him to have a real solid hold on the faces of anyone other than regulars and people he knew from outside of his jobs - former classmates, family friends, the nurses and the ER doctor who had stitched Chad up after he had slipped and gashed his arm open trying to shovel his neighbor's driveway a while back. But with the gas station being right next to the interstate Chad had probably met everybody in the county at least once, dealt with plenty of people once who just passed through and were never seen again.

This guy, though, was ringing a bell.

But Chad jus kept drawing blanks as he tried to place him. Taller, looked like he was a few years older than Chad, with sharp eyes and close cropped black hair. He wasn't wearing a uniform, but something about the way the guy held himself made Chad think that he was a cop, or maybe military. Chad didn't know many people like that, but maybe this guy had a brother or some cousins that had been in Chad's grade in school, something like that?

The guy did a doubletake when he finally made his way over to the register, like he maybe remembered Chad too, and Chad cleared his throat as he rang up the Reese's. “Anything else I can help you with today?”

“I know this is a long shot.” the guy said “But do you happen to know a Dean Ambrose? I lost contact with him a while back, but he used to live down the road from here.”

Chad hummed, non-committal as he finished cashing the guy out. Pretended to have slower counting skills than he really did as he dug pennies out of the change drawer. He needed a couple extra seconds to think.

Chad wasn't a big fan of trick questions like that. If he asked why the guy wanted to know then it was just as good as saying yes. And Chad wasn't sure he wanted to do that without having any idea why the guy was looking for Dean. Knowing Dean, it probably wasn't good. But it could have been, and Chad didn't want to lie outright and say no. Just in case.

“Maybe.” Chad hedged, handing over the coins and the receipt “Sorta scruffy, about your height? He stops in every once in awhile.”

The way that the guys face lit up made Chad think that he had probably done a good thing by not just blowing him off. It was a look of honest happiness and relief, not the expression of someone who was owed money or had a grudge narrowing in on a target.

“Do you know where he lives? I was hoping to talk to him while I'm in town.”

“Nope, sorry.” Chad shrugged, drumming his fingertips on the countertop. JJ would have realized that Chad was lying, knew all his tells, but this guy didn't. Chad wasn't going to start giving out personal information about his friends to people he didn't even know, even if this guy didn't seem like he had an axe to grind against Dean or anything.

“Well could you give him this, maybe?” The guy had snagged one of the pens off the cup in the counter, scrawling something on the reverse side of the receipt that Chad had handed him moments before, passing it back across. “If you see him around?”

Chad looked down, checked the name written above the phone number. “Sure thing, Roman. Have a good one.”


	11. Family and Genus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (S’mores 1)

Sami had been surprised but pleased Dean's invitation to what Dean had said would be ‘a family friendly s’mores night, Sami, you'll love it’. It was important to get out and socialize. Sami had always heard about how much harder it was to make friends as an adult than it had been as a college student, and that so far proven to be true. Which was definitely saying something, since Sami hadn't been that great at making friends in college either.

Sami parked his car, looked around to make sure that he was in the right place before he shut it off. Following Dean's loose directions had been nerve wracking, but Sami was pretty sure that he'd gotten it right.

‘ _ Turn at the gas station, drive past the water tower and the trailer park, then just keep going past the houses ‘til the road curves and you can't miss it _ ’ were the type of directions that Sami would have been asked to follow in his own personal hell. Sami really should have just insisted on picking Dean up and saved himself some anxiety. But Dean always asked when he wanted a ride somewhere, and Sami hadn't wanted to push. 

(“You don't have a car?” Sami had asked Dean, once, back after they had first started hanging out again.

“Nah.” Dean had shrugged. “Too fuckin’ expensive. I could buy a cheap beater but that other shit adds up, gas and insurance and those damn. The tags.”

“Registration. Yeah.”

“Yeah, that. But also, you know…” Dean had trailed off, made a vague hand motion that Sami had not been able to decrypt.

“Know what?”

“I'm not a big fan of staying sober?” Like it was a question, before he added “I'm not great at it anyways. Y’know I've got a record that says I'm always fuckin’ up when I get fucked up. It just seems better not to give myself a chance to do some shit I'd really regret.”)

The park was on the side of a little hill, a small grassy field lined with shaggy conifers. There was a blue and red jungle gym on the other side of the park with a slide and some spring mounted animals that kids could ride, a few picnic tables with their black metal barbecues or fire pits sunk into the ground close by. And there was Dean, sitting on top of one picnic table and watching Sami as he unloaded the stuff that Dean had asked him to bring. 

“Hey, Sami.” Dean had a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other and he waved the latter at Sami as he approached, the shiny base of the can making lazy rings in the air before he set it down on the table.  “You're kinda early, huh?” 

Sami looked back and forth and didn't see anyone nearby other than Dean, who had his own white-and-blue plastic Wal-Mart bag sitting on the bench in between to his scuffed boots. Aside from a lady walking her dog across the far edge of the grass, Sami and Dean had the place to themselves. So Sami might have been continuing his habit of showing up for things embarrassingly early, but at least he wasn't alone this time. 

“You're here too.” Sami shrugged as he set his own bag down on top of the picnic table next to Dean, paused to unzip his jacket. Sami had checked the weather before leaving his apartment, of course. It wasn't supposed to get too cold and they were going to have the fire but Sami had still wanted to be prepared in case the temperature dropped more than expected after the sun set.

“Well, I gotta pregame.” Dean shrugged as he lifted the beer up to his mouth and drained it, crunched the can against the picnic table after he was done.

“What? Didn't you tell me this was an, and I quote, family friendly s’mores party?”

“Well, yeah. That's why I'm drinking ahead of time Sami.”

The lady with the dog had moved on, so for a long quiet moment it was just them in the park in the purple twilight. For a second Sami thought that there was something wrong with his vision until he realized that the sparks of light that he was seeing were fireflies, their first flashes as the day turned dark. Then there was another flash of fire as Dean flicked his cigarette, bent over to dig through the bag between his feet.

“What's up?”

“Just remembered that we’ve gotta get the fire lit before Heath shows up. I know he ain't gonna agree with our methods.” 

“Um. What does that mean,  _ our _ methods?” Sami asked, but his question was immediately answered when Dean straightened up holding a can of lighter fluid. 

“It means...” Dean said as he stood up from the table, stretching his long legs as he fished a black plastic lighter out of his front pocket. He tossed the lighter underhand to Sami, who almost fumbled it. “That you're gonna want to stand back when you light this.”

\---

The sun had already started to set by the time Heath got the kids in their shoes and jackets and got everyone heading in the same direction to the park.

It was great that the park was close enough to walk to. Heath didn't have to get everyone loaded up in the van every time the kids wanted to go, didn't have to use up any gas to drive. Sure, he still had to deal with the older kids trying to run further ahead than he had told them they could go and Ricky trying to pick up every bug he saw on the sidewalk. But it was still nice, even if it reminded Heath that most of them were going to need new shoes in the next month or two.

It stung, a little, that even though Heath had started making more money as assistant manager he still hadn’t been able to get much of anything saved. Things just kept popping up. He hadn't made any real dent in getting caught up on the rent, and what little money he had managed to set aside had been pretty well ate up by paying for those traffic tickets. 

Heath tried not to think about that too much, though. It still made him feel sick to remember. The curling embarrassment in his stomach at how they'd had to wait on the side of the road for his mom and Hayden to come pick them up, all eight of them too many to fit in just one car. How the cop had sat there in his cruiser, watching, waiting to make sure that Heath didn't try to drive the van again. Heath’d had to reassure the kids that everything was fine, that it was just the job of the policeman to make sure everyone followed the rules and that things were fair. 

At least Heath had been able to pay for the tickets and hadn't needed to go and get a payday loan. Heath told himself that he had been lucky. He'd been able to go into the DMV first thing the next Monday to pay the fines and show his insurance card and get his license fixed so that he could go to work and buy groceries and have a couple extra dollars for a bag of marshmallows. 

The flames were roaring in the fire pit when they got to the park, too intense to roast marshmallows over yet, so after the kids ran off to chase fireflies and play on the playground while they waited for the wood to burn down to embers. Heath had to shift Waylon to his other hip to shake hands as Dean introduced Heath to his friend.

“Hey, Heath. This is my buddy Sami that I told you about. Sami, Heath. He used to be in a band too, you know.”

Sami hadn't looked too thrilled at the start, but he sure perked up when Dean mentioned the thing about the band. “Really?” 

Heath had noticed as they greeted one another that the edges of Samis beard were singed and that he was missing half an eyebrow on the same side of his face.  “Yeah, uh. It was just me’n a few of my cousins doin’ covers of some outlaw country songs. That was back when I had less kids though. What about you?”

They made small talk for a while after, Sami tried to explain what ska was to Heath while they the kids ran around on the playground. Heath had to pause for a minute to change a diaper, didn’t miss the way that Sami went green and looked away. Heath thought Sami seemed nice enough, but he didn't really know how to act around him. Even though they were basically the same age, Heath had seven kids and two jobs while Sami had said that he had a college degree and a quality analysis position at the plant. That was the way that he’d said it too - ‘a quality analysis position’. 

Heath knew that he wasn't really dumb even though he'd never finished school, but. It was just a big gulf to try and get across, was all, and he kinda got the feeling that Sami felt the same way. It wasn't like Sami had said anything to try and make Heath feel bad about himself or anything like that. In fact, all Sami that had really done was be smart and get grossed out by a diaper. Which was pretty understandable. But Heath did at least try to discourage Sami from wasting his time setting out all the s’mores ingredients with a type of fussy neatness that was completely foreign to Heath. But Sami still seemed intent on doing it even though Heath had told him the kids would just make a mess of it.

“It's okay, I don't mind.” Sami had said as he opened a bag of marshmallows very carefully along the seam at one end instead of just ripping a hole in the middle the way that Heath always did. 

Before Heath could say anything else, Dean’s face lit up like he had discovered some secret treasure as he said “Yo, Sami, what the fuck are these?”

“Dean!” Heath warned. All the kids except Waylon were too far away to hear, but Waylon had been saying real words for a while now in addition to the little bits of baby sign that Bo had taught him. Waylon understood plenty and Heath didn't need him swearing before he was even two years old.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” Dean said, his apology more of an automatic reflex than anything else. Dean had a couple of long, pointy pieces of metal held in his fist, waving them back and forth accusingly at his friend. “But seriously Sami, what are these even for? Were you plannin’ on shankin’ someone?”

“They're foldable metal skewers. For roasting the marshmallows?” Sami said, sounding uncertain all of a sudden “I picked them up at the store on the way over when I stopped to get the chocolate bars.”

“Why? Did you think that all the trees in town ran out of sticks or something?”

“That's not sanitary.” Sami said, sounding aghast, and Heath honestly couldn't tell if he was joking or not. He didn't know the guy well enough to tell if he was just putting it on, the way that Sami sounded like Dean had just asked him to eat spaghetti off a hospital floor or something. “Who knows what kind of contaminants could be on those sticks? I thought you all would have your own, but I can run back real quick and get some more. They come in three packs.”

“That's real nice of you, but-”

“I think Ricky just fed Gunner a bug!” Dean gasped, nearly doubled over from laughing. Heath whipped his head around to see the guilty twins staring back at him. There was no point in shouting when they already knew they were in trouble so Heath just shook his head, and the boys drug their feet in the wood chips as they started started to skulk back toward the where the adults were standing.

“It’s real nice of you to offer ‘bout the skewers.” Heath said again, once the boys had been separated at different ends of the picnic table. “But I think we're kinda past that point.”

“Speaking of bein’ past points.” Dean had stopped laughing, by then, and Heath noticed that Dean's attention was firmly fixed over Heath’s shoulder. Staring at where a car had just pulled into the parking space beside Heath’s van. “Look who just showed up.”


	12. Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Rhyno - S’mores 2)

Rhyno had been trying to be more careful in his interactions with Heath. He had tried to keep things work related and maintain an appropriate managerial relationship. But. He hadn’t stopped going to Heath’s place to watch Cosmos, and he hadn’t turned down this invitation because, well. Because Heath had gone into a story about the first time Heath’s oldest brother Harrison had shown him how to make s’mores and then he had been smiling at Rhyno and. Rhyno hadn’t been able to turn him down.

There was nothing to be worried about. He was being normal and keeping things professional even if he did spend time with Heath outside of work. He would make small talk and try to keep his conversations with Heath confined to work related matters and everything was going to be fine. It would be easy, especially because Rhyno had ended up talking to the only person there that he hadn't met before.

“So, uh, Sami. How are you related to Heath?"  Rhyno said as he leaned over to take a pinecone from Jolene. 

He examined it closely for a second before she took it back and handed it to Sami. They were sitting next to each other at the picnic table, watching as Dean and Heath had a low-voiced argument over on the far side of the fire pit. As Rhyno watched Dean poked at the embers with a stick, throwing up showers of sparks as Heath crossed his arms over his chest.

“Related to - oh, no, I'm not. Wait, am I supposed to do something with this?” Sami looked to Rhyno, stuck holding the pinecone as Jolene ran away to tackle Boomer. “I guess I'll just -” Sami sat it gingerly back on the ground, wiped his hands off on the knees of his pants.

“Oh.” Rhyno said “I guess I just assumed because of your, uh. Hair.”

Jolene returned, handed Sami another pinecone. Picked up the one that he had set down and gave that back to him too.

Rhyno thought that things had been going alright so far, but he should have known that it was only just a matter of time. He hadn’t picked up on the fact that there was some established argument in progress, laying dormant until Rhyno had picked up one of the metal marshmallow skewers.

“See Dean? I told you they were a good idea! Thank you, Rhyno.” Sami said. Rhyno had no idea what he was being thanked for or why Dean was suddenly kicking at the gravel and muttering something vaguely obscene. 

All Rhyno could do was stand there as he stare down at the apparently contentious metal skewer. He looked over at Heath, hoping for help, Heath just smiled and shrugged before he handed Waylon over to Rhyno so that he could had to hurry over to stop Jayla who, by the looks of things, had started to wind up for an attempt to jump over the fire pit. 

Rhyno experienced a brief moment of near terror when he heard Dean start telling the kids about how he could wave his hand through the fire without it hurting, but Heath put a quick stop to that too. 

The flames had mostly burned down by then, low and red, but Rhyno hung back with the baby as everyone else gathered around to roast their marshmallows. There were too many people over there already, and they didn't need him taking up half the space and getting in the way. So he listened to the kids laughing and the crickets chirping, watched as Heath took a couple of pictures on his phone of the kids all smushed together trying to get their marshmallows into the perfect spots, of Dean trying to convince Sami that burnt marshmallows were best, of Waylon fussing in Rhyno's arms.

Rhyno couldn't actually remember ever having made s’mores before. Maybe there had been a bag of marshmallows at one of the football team’s bonfires, but that certainly hadn't been the point of the event. In fact, Rhyno seemed to remember that night had ended with Steve Austin nearly choking to death after he had drunkenly made Rhyno dare him to see how many of the marshmallows he could stuff in his mouth at one time.

Rhyno moved to the side when everyone else came back over with the first round of toasted marshmallows to put the s’mores together. He had been trying and failing to calm Waylon down after he had been upset by a lightning bug landing on his nose. He clearly wanted to be put down so that he could run around, but the first time Rhyno tried to let him Waylon immediately tried to eat a cigarette butt and then got even madder when Rhyno wouldn't let him.

“Aww, poor crabby baby.” Heath said as he came over to help, took Waylon back from Rhyno. “You're real sleepy, huh? Well grandma’ll be here soon.”

Sure enough a car pulled into the lot next to Rhyno's own barely a minute later and Waylon seemed thrilled by the development. He actually perked up and started smiling, waved goodbye to everyone, including Rhyno. But Rhyno was confused when Heath smiled at him too and said 

“Here. I trust you.”

Rhyno didn't know what Heath was talking about until he looked down and saw that Heath had the bag of marshmallows in his free hand and was trying to give them to Rhyno. Hesitantly, Rhyno took the bag. Rhyno just stood there for a minute with the marshmallows in hand, very aware that the kids had started to eye them, until Heath gave him some last words of advice.

“Jus’ don't let ‘em eat so many that they make themselves sick.”

It was a good idea in theory. Except that Rhyno had no idea what he was doing. Luckily, Heath’s kids didn't mind showing Rhyno the ropes.

He supervised them through a couple of rounds of s’mores making before he felt obligated to cut them off, especially since Gunner looked like he was about to vibrate out of his skin. So by the time it was Rhyno's turn to make a s’more, he had realized that there was a very specific way to properly assemble two graham crackers and a chocolate square with the gooey marshmallow in the middle.

It was good that he had paid attention, that the kids didn't mind him leaning over to watch their intense assembly process - he definitely would have messed it up on his own. But he must not have been observant enough about the actual marshmallow roasting because, when it came time for Rhyno to finally toast his own, the kids were practically crawling over him to offer advice.

“You gotta get it real close down by the fire.” Boomer said, hands stuck in his back pockets as he watched Rhyno lower the skewer ever so slightly. “Nah, closer. It's never gonna get cooked that high up.”

Rhyno tried to follow the direction but in the end his marshmallow just ended up catching fire. It was burned to a crisp by the time he blew it out, and Rhyno had resigned himself to having to eat his charred mistake until Boomer offered to eat it for him. Then Cheyenne told him to hold the next one so high up above the embers that Rhyno couldn't imagine that it was even getting warm. Still, he sat there for a couple of minutes until Cheyenne said she wanted to inspect it.

“Why?” Rhyno had asked, genuinely confused.

“Cause it might be broken.”

“I, uh. I don't think marshmallows can break.”

“Yes they can. Lemme see it.”

So Rhyno had pulled his marshmallow back for her to review and Cheyenne had declared it to be broken immediately, then she grabbed it before Rhyno could check and see what was wrong with it and skipped over to the picnic table.

“I'll eat this’n so you can have one that ain't  broke!”

Most of the kids had abandoned the fire by then, hyped up on sugar and more excited to swing or run around on the playground with Dean than to roast any more marshmallows. So Rhyno hunkered down, then, holding the skewer just far enough away from the coals that the marshmallow slowly turned a golden brown. He was intent enough on the process that he didn't even notice Jayla and Jolene sneaking up beside him and snagging marshmallows out of the bag until their giggling gave them away. 

Rhyno looked up to see if anyone else had noticed - Dean and the older kids had moved across the park and were throwing up pine cones up the slide on the playground for some reason, Sami standing off to the side and looking uncomfortable as Gunner tugged on his leg and Ricky kept trying to hand him something. Knowing Ricky it was probably a bug. But what Rhyno hadn't seen was Heath coming up behind him, startled and stood up immediately when Heath put a hand on shoulder.

When Rhyno looked at him Heath was shaking his head, clearly fond, as he watched twins plop down on the grass. They started to feed each other the stolen marshmallows in little torn-off pieces. “You gotta watch tour back Mr. Rhyno. I can't believe how naughty they’re gettin’ to be.”

Rhyno didn't really know what to say to that, so he just nodded as he tried to put his s’more together correctly. He had realized over the course of watching Cosmos with the Slaters that Heath had a particular way that he used certain words. There was a difference between being ‘naughty’ and being ‘bad’. Naughty behavior was fairly common and mostly seemed to mean exasperating, but Heath’s kids were rarely bad the way that Rhyno remembered he had as little kid himself - bad at participating properly, bad at fitting in. Rhyno had never been precocious or sweet, but every all of Heath’s family was so good. Easy to love.

In the time it took Rhyno to line up the chocolate on the graham cracker correctly, Heath had already stabbed his marshmallow into the coals, caught it on fire the same way that Boomer had instructed Rhyno to do earlier before blowing it out. Rhyno stepped to the side when Heath came and stood right next to him at the picnic table, aware as always of how much space he took up.

“Those two're probably gonna be worse than my brothers when they're grown. But I don't gotta tell you that though, do I?” Heath grinned down at him, words a little muffled when he took a bite of the s’more. “You know how twins are.”

“Um.” The only twins Rhyno had ever spent much time around were Heath’s two pairs, and he definitely wouldn't have gone so far as to say that he knew how they were. Rhyno was still baffled by the children at all turns, and not just the twins.

“Oh, uh -” Heath swallowed, coughed to the side and took a drink out of a forgotten juice box that had been left on the table. “Dean's told me ‘bout Terry a couple times. Y'all two are identical, right?”

Oh.

“No.” Rhyno said, unable to think of any way to salvage the situation. Figured it was better to just get it over with. It was hard to tell in the low firelight, but it looked like Heath went a little pale as Rhyno told the blunt truth. “I don't have a brother.”

“Ah, geez, I'm sorry. Dean had said that you used to work together, I should've known something happened.” Heath looked at him, eyes wide and sorrowful, and Rhyno had no idea what was on his face that made Heath continue. “Shoulda known better since you never talk about him. Did you two have a fallin’ out, or.” Heath was starting to choke up. “Did he pass away?”

Rhyno honestly considered just walking away from the conversation. Turning his back on the fire and getting into his car, driving until he ran out of gas and then wandering out into the fields until he could go no further. Maybe a little complicated of a plan, but it honestly didn't seem like too dramatic a fate given just how badly Rhyno had fumbled all of this. Everyone had been having a nice time until Rhyno showed up, and now he had given the kids too many treats and had Heath almost in tears about the presumed death of a twin brother that had never existed. All because Rhyno had been too much of an awkward sack of shit to just tell the truth to Heath’s friend.

“I just. I can't even think ‘bout losing one of my brothers like that.” Heath continued. He wiped at his face with his free hand, left a smear of melted chocolate on his cheek. “Was it sudden, or -. No, sorry. I'm sorry Mr. Rhyno you don't gotta talk about it, I didn' mean to pry.”

“No.” Rhyno said again as he looked down at his own s’more, still uneaten. “I meant. I really don't have a brother. I'm an only child.”

“Oh!” Heath sounded a little surprised, but not upset. “Don' know why I thought... But if you were the only kid then who's -”

“Me. That's, uh. Terry's my real name. But no one ever calls me that.” 

The little space between Heaths eyebrows was wrinkled together when Rhyno looked up, and when he spoke the words came slow like he was still trying to figure something out.

“I didn't know that.” Heath said, and then “Wait. How’d  _ Dean _ know that?”

Rhyno ate a bite of his s’more, hoped that something would happen to distract Heath in the time it took for him to finish chewing. Instead, Heath just waited patiently for him to finish and then Rhyno still had to explain. 

“Did, uh. Did Dean tell you about the time that -”

“That he was drunk and walkin’ barefooted through the drive thru and Terry - I mean you, I guess. You wouldn't serve him? Yeah. He's mentioned it a few times.” Heath rolled his eyes.

Rhyno nodded. That sounded about right. 

“I tried going by Terry for awhile after I took over the Arby’s? It, uh. Didn't stick. But I think the incident with Dean happened back then, so he must have read it off my name tag. I'm not sure how he remembered it, he could barely even -.” Rhyno shook his head, looked back down at the picnic table. The last thing he wanted to do was insult one of Heath's friends. “Anyways. He asked me about it. At the girls’ birthday party, and I, um. I just lied and pretended that Terry was someone else so he'd stop bothering me about it. Sorry.”

The truth of it was not particularly flattering. Rhyno had known that before he started speaking, but it sounded even worse and there wasn't anything that he could do about that. It was a poor excuse for such a continued deception yet it was the only one Rhyno had. So he hadn't expected it at all when Heath had started to laugh - slight at first, but then so hard that he had to sit down and brace himself on the table. By that time everyone else had looked over. Dean was holding a pine cone, looked like he planned to throw it at Rhyno even though he was halfway across the park and couldn't possible have heard Rhyno's confession.

“Oh my god.” Heath had to wipe at his eyes. “That's the smartest dang thing. I wish I woulda thought of that.”

“...really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I love Dean, don't get me wrong, but he can be a lot to deal with when he gets riled up. If he didn't know my family so good then I'd be sendin’ him off on snipe hunts too, have him lookin' for my fake twin each time you come up.”

“Wait, what do I have to do with -”

“So should I call you Terry now?” Heath grinned at him but Rhyno shifted, uncomfortable as he ate another bite of s’more.

“No, I don’t. I think I'd get confused, honestly, no one's called me that in years.” Even his dad called him Rhyno, the two times a year that they talked on the phone, but Rhyno didn't volunteer that information. Instead Rhyno reached down to straighten up all the ripped open packages of graham crackers, made himself useful. 

Heath nodded, watching Rhyno fidget with the crackers. “Yeah, my Uncle Speedy's like that. He even put ‘Speedy’ on his tax return one year instead of… well, instead of whatever his real name is. I dunno. But anyways, that don't matter, I'll just keep callin' you Mr. Rhyno then.”

“Or just Rhyno. You know, when we're not at work.” He blurted out before he could stop himself, before he could remember that he did not need to highlight all the marks in the column of his unprofessional employer behavior. Rhyno wanted to take it back, to apologize, but Heath smiled at him

"Yeah, I think I'd like that too."


	13. Beverly Hills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Miz - celebrity)

There’s a commercial that plays on the local public access TV station at least once every other commercial break. It comes on all the time but it's still always a jarring change in production values from the local news or the  high school hockey game or the Polka Time show or whatever else was otherwise being broadcast. Those are usually pretty grainy, but this commercial looks excellent - clear and in as high a definition as a TV set will display.

Sometimes when people watch this commercial they feel like they may have seen it before somewhere else. On a bigger screen. Maybe with the cars driving from left to right instead of right to left. It's hard to put a finger on, though, and most people watching don't think too hard about it. This part of the commercial looks better, has higher production values, than anything else on the public access station but it is probably just some fancy stock footage or something.

The start of the commercial shows a sleek, black Ford Mustang tearing out of a parking lot. It is quickly pursued by a steel grey Chrysler that chases the Mustang down a cracked, dry highway. Tires squeal on the pavement, engines rev, the sky above is a flawless empty blue as the Mustang and the Chrysler weave around the other cars on the road. The windows of the vehicles are so tinted that it is impossible to get a good look at the drivers as the cars blow through stop lights and whip around corners without even tapping their brakes. 

This is how the light pole or at corner of Park Ave and 3rd Street got knocked over. Not as part of filming the commercial - it's obvious from the first these scenes were not filmed in any of the counties where this commercial gets air time. But it was a direct inspiration for Dolph, who definitely could have drifted that corner no problem if not for the fact that it had rained the day before.

There are some slightly choppy cuts in the action now and then. Most of the transitions are fairly smooth but these look a little amateur, as if whoever made this commercial was editing out certain parts as best as he could. Which is exactly what happened. 

People in this town, Miz knows, are all yokels with terrible taste in film. Miz figured that no one would be able to pick out this car chase scene as being from Drive - not without seeing Ryan Gosling’s face or any of the more violent scenes - even though he ripped it straight from the Youtube video “Drive Best Car Chase”. Even with all of his movie magic skills, Miz couldn’t cut out all the scenes of Ryan Gosling behind the wheel quite as flawlessly as he would have liked. But Miz is supposed to be the talent and not the post-production crew, so he doesn't let it bother him. It's still very good - even better cinema than the original.

That movie just would have been so much better if Miz had starred in the leading role. And Maryse agreed. Unfortunately Miz’s headshot must have gotten lost in the mail, because he was never called to audition and the studio had to settle for Gosling instead. Miz could have really brought some extra depth to the character and he would have really excelled at beating that guy to death with the hammer.

With all the unnecessary Ryan Gosling parts cut out it doesn't take that long for the car chase scene to reach the point where, in the movie, the Chrysler would have rear-ended the Mustang. But Miz didn't want to show the cars actually being damaged, so before that can happen there is a sudden Windows Movie Maker star-wipe. The the scene shifts. Instead of looking at a car chase, viewers are now watching Miz and his wife Maryse running along a rooftop. Well, running in place in front of a green screen onto which a rooftop has been added in post. 

It's almost impossible to tell, though. Really.

Miz and Maryse spent an entire afternoon shooting takes so that the speed of their run would match as closely as possible to the speed of the rooftop stock footage. It had to be perfect, just like them. Maryse had come up with the idea to get a fan so that Miz’s scarf would blow out behind him as if he were actually running. Not only is Miz’s wife his best friend and the hottest person he has ever met, but she is also a complete genius. The two of them are definitely the town’s power couple.

In the commercial they reach the edge of the rooftop together. They reach out and hold hands, not bothering to look down before they jump in the last possible instant. A rolling wall of flame covers most of the screen as they fall out of sight. Then, once the fire effect has cleared, the commercial cut to something much more standard to the public access channel. A series of long, panning shots of the used car lot in tge summer. Then the bright splash of text graphics popping up while Miz’s voiceover extolls the virtues of buying a used car.

Great Value. Cash For Trades. Bad Credit? No Credit? No Problem! These Deals Will Not Last! 

Treat yourself to a brand new-to-you vehicle down at A-Lister Auto! Brand new on the lot, this beautiful lime green 2010 Nissan Cube! This is the car of the future, just look at those stylish windows! All the options, great gas mileage, this beauty has hardly been driven at all. Or how about this 2002 Honda Civic, great condition, you wouldn't even be able to tell that it has a salvage title. And the hottest deal yet, check out this 1994 Ford Explorer. Don’t mind the rust - it may look rough but you shouldn’t judge a movie by it’s poster. The Explorer has plenty of storage space and it runs like a dream. At this price, what more could you ask for?

It was a great commercial. Even better than the Indiana Jones themed one where Mix made it look like he was driving away from the rolling boulder in a Suzuki Samurai. Miz was definitely a local celebrity but unfortunately he was also the only person in this town with a sense of taste. Or manners. Which was why Miz had to constantly defend himself against disrespectful ingrates.

“I've never been to Hollywood? How dare you! I've been to Hollywood. My wife and I have been to California five times! Have  _ you _ ever seen where George Clooney lives? Have  _ you _ ever seen David Boreanaz taking out his garbage? I don't think so, buddy!”

“Sir, I'm going to need you to-”

“So don't you say I've never been to Hollywood! Next time you need a used car you're going to be in trouble, because I will  _ never forget _ your disrespect -”

“Hey!”

“What!”

“I'm going to need you to calm down. You can't just start yelling in the middle of produce department, we've talked about this before.”


	14. Ghost of a Shark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Braun Strowman, Erick Rowan - stages)

Braun saw Luke’s truck parked on the street in front of his place as soon as he turned onto the block, the bold black on white letters on the tailgate that said REPENT. It stood out even in the dark, lit up by the nighttime glow of the streetlamps and the lights that shone through the curtains of other people’s windows.

It was the end of what had been a very long day for Braun. The drive to and from the city had taken it's toll, to say nothing of the six tries it had taken them to get the IV started in his arm. Braun felt scraped open and exhausted and he did not have the patience in his heart to deal with Luke. But he also didn't have much of a choice, given that Luke had seen fit to block his driveway.

Braun parked behind Luke's truck and his own vehicle rocked on its squeaky shocks as he stepped out of it. He could see the still silhouette of someone through the back glass as he walked up to the driver's side but it wasn't until he was about to knock on the window that Braun saw that it was actually Erick that he had caught napping behind the wheel.

Erick had his arms crossed over his chest, mouth hanging slack as he slept. Braun was struck by the same impulse that he had always felt when they had been children and he had found Erick sleeping when he wasn't supposed to be. An almost overwhelming urge to see how many dead leaves he could sneak into Erick’s open mouth before Erick woke up and spit them everywhere. But Erick had the window rolled up and besides. Those days were long behind them.

Bray refused to face Braun, to even let Braun see his shadow on the rare occasions that Braun found himself back at the Compound. Luke would speak to him, but only to tell Braun that there was still time for him to seek forgiveness and be cleansed for his sins of doubt. Erick was the one who had invited Braun back to pick the chokecherries, the only one who had ever called or passed friendly words with Braun if their paths had crossed.

One day, more than a year ago, Braun had found Erick waiting for him in the parking lot of the chemical plant. Looking over his shoulder, Erick said that he was going to talk to his wife about leaving the Compound. Asked if they could stay with Braun when they did. Braun had nodded and remembered that Erick’s wife had always been true believer, knew that Erick would never leave without her and his girls. But Braun had hoped. Maybe. Maybe.

Erick had never mentioned it again, any of the other times they'd run into each other. And Braun hadn't asked. And he wasn't going to ask now. If Erick had shown up alone and driving Luke's truck then Braun felt fairly sure that this was a different type of visit.

“Hey, Big Red.” Braun rapped his fingers on the glass. “Erick. Wake up.”

Erick startled at the knock on the window. He blinked and stretched his arms out in front of himself for a second while he looked around like he wasn’t quite sure where he was. Then Erick saw Braun standing outside the door and reached for the handle, but Braun made him wait for a second before stepping back enough for Erick to open the door. It squealed on rusty hinges as it opened and Erick swung around to that the heels of his boots were resting on the running board. One elbow braced on the back of the bench seat, the other on the steering wheel. Erick yawned and blinked once, twice, shook his head as he squinted at Braun.

“Where’ve you been all day?” Erick asked, like it was any of his business.

“Up in the city.”

That got Erick’s attention for some reason, and he sat up a little straighter in his seat as he looked at Braun and said, very softly, like they were sharing secrets in the street. “Oh. So you went to see him?”

“Who?”

Braun pitched his voice low as he leaned forward with his forearms braced on the roof. Luke's truck dipped and settled under the weight of Braun’s lean, the whole thing tilting towards the driver's side. It was a looming sort of stance even though Braun didn’t intend it to be intimidating - he had just wanted to be able to hear whatever Erick was saying since Braun had lost the thread of the conversation. Erick, who had lived around Braun for most of his life and wasn’t bothered by Braun’s size, just looked baffled instead of uneasy.

“Luke.”

“Why would Luke be in the city?” Braun asked, even more confused than he had been the moment before.

“Wait, why were _you_ in the city?” Erick asked, the disbelief in his voice a throwback to the time when they knew everything about each other.

“Scans.” Braun said, blunt.

“Scans?” Erick just stared up at him, blank, until Braun sighed and explained

“Yeah. I gotta go up there a couple times a year yet. Checkin’ to make sure that the cancer isn't back.”

Braun could have just said _‘sickness,’_ which was, as far as he knew, the only way that anyone on the Compound referred to what had happened to him. But he hadn’t. He saw no need to pad the truth of the thing.

Erick shifted in his seat again, looked past Braun to the dark sky for a second as something flicked across his face. Then he looked back at Braun. “Can it do that?”

“Do what?”

“Just come back one day. I figured that you'd been cured.”

Braun blinked. Sometimes he forgot that not everyone had the same knowing that he did. That not everyone had the same long scars. But there was no reason that Erick would have know. Braun hadn't either until he’d had to.

Braun had never lied when the doctors or the social worker had asked him if he understood. He had said no and sat and listened and let himself be a vessel for the information as he had once been a vessel for the Word. They explained how there could be different stages of the tumor in his esophagus, but that 3 was not as low as it sounded when there were only 4 in total. How things like chemo and radiation were supposed to work or why he needed to know his real birthdate to sign up for Medicaid or what it would mean to recover after the surgery, so kitten weak that he couldn't even pick up a gallon jug for months. How there was no real ‘being cured,’ only remission for as long as it lasted.

In the beginning Braun had not had any reference for the way in which his body had betrayed him. But he had come to understand, in time.

“Yeah.” Braun said even as shook his head, clearing cobwebs. “It could come back. Hasn't yet, though.”

“That’s. Real good, Braun, I’m glad.” Erick said, and he really did sound glad. Which was -

“Thanks.” Braun’s fingers went a little tighter against the roof of the truck. “But why'd you come, really. Something about Luke?”

“Oh. Yeah. So, you remember how he’s always hunting for the little Rhodes?”

Braun nodded. Of course he did. Cody Rhodes’ snitching was the reason why Luke had done three years down in the state penitentiary and Luke, well. Luke had never been a big fan of the ‘forgiveness’ part of the Good Book.

“Bout two weeks ago now Luke left to try’n track him down again.” Erick said. “And he never came back. Then one of the sheriffs showed up at the compound lookin’ for his next of kin.”

It took Braun a second to process that. Not because he didn’t understand the words, but because - “Luke’s dead?”

“No, not dead. Someone hit him in the back of the head real hard. Split his skull and put him in a coma. They had to move him up to a hospital in the city. There's a machine breathin’ for him and they don’t know if -. When, he’s gonna wake up.” Erick scrubbed a hand across his face. “Bray had me take Luke’s mama and sister up there to pray over him since we can't bring him home.”

Before, Braun had assumed before that he had caught Erick napping out of boredom, sick of sitting around and waiting for Braun. Now Braun saw how exhausted Erick really was, the defeated slope of his shoulders and the lines around his eyes. Braun figured there hadn't been much opportunity for rest around the Compound.

“I’m sorry for Luke.” Braun said, and he didn’t ask why Erick had come to give him the news because he already had a pretty good guess what the next words were going to be, even before Erick sighed and said

“Bray wants you to come back home.” Erick hesitated for a second, as if he knew better than to say the next words that came out of his mouth. But in the end he did anyways, all the words spilling out of him in a rush. “Bray told me I had to tell you that he said he’d forgive you. If you came back to the family.”

There wasn't enough light coming off the streetlight to really see the fall leaves by, but Braun could hold the colors of them in his mind. Blaze oranges and brilliant yellows and endless reds and the calm night was suddenly split by Braun’s humorless laugh, a wild thing that tore out of his chest with grinding teeth and left everything behind it gaping and raw. Erick flinched.

It wasn’t that late, not yet midnight, but the street was empty and quiet except for them. Braun could hear the crickets chirping, the low hum of the power lines and the growing buzz in his own head. The white noise of his memories of having been sick and alone and so far away from the only family he'd ever had. A distance that couldn't just be measured in miles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's what happened with Braun
> 
> (I'm happy to answer most questions about this chapter but I just feel compelled to let you guys know that it’s also what happened with me. Minus the cult parts. I am not trying to make this about me AT ALL, I guess I just don't want anyone giving me a hard time about my credentials on this particular thing.)
> 
> Edit: I've been clear for two years, it's all good right now <3


	15. Going the Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Ensemble - Chamber of Commerce)

**Chamber of Commerce Monthly** **Meeting Minutes**

October 15th

 

**Attendance**

Board Member Attendance

Title - Organization - Present

President - Hart Heating & Cooling - Y

Vice President - Heyman, Heyman, and Heyman, Esq. - Y (call in)

Treasurer - Richard Flair (multiple businesses) - Y

Secretary - Mick’s Sporting Goods - Y

Board Member - MHD Consulting Group - N

Board Member - State Farm Insurance Agency - N

Board Member - Arby's - Y

 

Member Listing - **Updated**

Union Bank, A-Lister Auto, Peaceful Rest Funeral Home and Cremation Services, NB Hair Ovations, Heartland Tree Service, Stateline Cooperative, Scyster Tax And Accounting, THE BUZZ 103.1, Steele Feed & Farm Supplies, Payday America, Valentine Construction, Blackjack Bar, Quality Quick Print, Volkoff Electric, Yankem Family Dental, Budget Inn, Warrior Concrete Products, **Little RainBo Buddies Daycare**

 

 

 **Meeting Location:** Elks Lodge, Room B

**Meeting Start**

Meeting Schedule Start: 3:30pm

Meeting Schedule Start: 4:00 pm

Meeting Scribe: Mick Foley

 

 

**Agenda**

Meeting Called To Order

> Approval of minutes from September meeting

> Natalya requested again that I record the meeting minutes on a computer instead of writing them by hand, but Rhyno said again that he doesn't mind typing them up for me so I don't have to type

_( >> Secretary's Note: Chamber Board elections are in December so hopefully I only have two more months of having to do this.) _

 

October Storm Clean-up Update

> All Chamber member businesses have been reopened at this time

> Rhyno said he went to the most recent City Council meeting and that they had talked about this.

> Natalya said that she was also in attendance at the city council meeting and provided update on storm recovery operations.

> All roads have been cleared at this time and a debris drop off site has been established at the Fairgrounds. There are still downed branches all over town, I know I've got a bunch in the back parking lot yet. The Volunteer Fire Department will continue evaluations of broken tree limbs and branches overhanging sidewalks, and will assist in their removal as needed. The city may need to secure commercial grinders to process the debris from this site and additional materials collected during routine curbside pickup.

> So if anyone knows anyone with some spare grinders sitting around then they should tell them to call Mayor McMahon

 

New Chamber Member Approval - Little RainBo Buddies Daycare

>  Concern raised that we should not have an unlicensed daycare as part of the Chamber

> Paul wanted to state for the record that no one on this Chamber has any knowledge as to whether or not Beauregard has ever operated an illegal daycare facility out of his home without a license

> Okay, now it has been stated for the record.

> Anyways Bo is licensed now so good for him. And he has paid his Chamber dues so once the check clears everything is copacetic.

> Little RainBo Buddies Daycare officially approved as new Chamber member!

_( >> Secretary's Note: Reminder to talk to Kane and get Bo’s welcome package put together so that I can give it to him the next time I see him) _

 

Fall Festival/Trunk or Treat

> Natalya talked to Regal with the City Council and confirmed that Monsoon Memorial Park has been reserved for Fall Festival. Also, all permits filed to block off 1st Avenue from Main Street to Ash Street for Trunk or Treat downtown again this year

> Events Committee on board to help with decorating the park, Ric volunteered to use his van to pick up the decorations from the funeral home a couple days ahead of time

> Reminder that Trunk or Treat only allows for store bought prepackaged treats to be handed out to the kids, nothing homemade

> Decision made by Board that Chamber involvement in these events will be on a case by case basis as usually want to set up their own individual stalls for Trunk or Treat

> Ric’s festival game idea formally denied

 

Polar Plunge

> Mayor McMahon and the city council are organizing the Polar Plunge again this year. Regal contacted us on the mayor's behalf about getting local businesses to either sponsor or participate by plunging

> Scheduled for March, will be raising money for the scholarship fund

> Natalya says that the VFD should be available to fill the pool as long as Vince gives them some notice

 

Window Decals

> Voting in whether to get a new batch of window decals since our ones from last year had the typo

> All votes in favor, motion to approve use of Chamber funds for decals

> Rhyno volunteered to double check the spell check and get the order dropped off at Quality Quick Print so we can distribute them at the Annual Meeting

 

Web Page Suggestions

> Continued discussion about who will build and maintain Chamber webpage. Rhyno asked if I could do it because I'm the Chamber secretary right now.

> Ric asked why it's okay for Rhyno to make jokes during meetings when Ric isn't allowed to any more

> Maybe we could get one of the high school kids to do it for volunteer hours or we could commission someone out of the Chamber account

> Bayley helped me update the settings on my phone that one time so maybe she could show us how to build a website.

> Discussion tabled for now

 

Committee Reports

  1. Events Committee



> Involvement in Monsoon Park decoration for festival previously discussed

> Cat Fashion Show??

> We should probably plan some networking events, maybe start doing Lunch ‘N Learn again

  1. Business and Industry Committee



> Did not meet

  1. Annual Meeting Committee



> Annual Chamber Meeting had been re-scheduled for January 20th

> Paul said that we will send an email invite to all Chamber members some time in December, but I'll still deliver invites in person to those who we all know don't check their email

> Still looking at entertainment options since Chris’ band will not be invited back this year

(>> Secretary's Note: I didn't think of this until after the meeting but I think one of the guys who works at the Arby's is a DJ. Maybe we can hire him? Make sure to ask Rhyno at next meeting)

  1. Budget/Finance Committee



> Did not meet

  1. Administrative Committee



> Did not meet

 

**Meeting End**

Meeting Schedule End: 5:00pm

Meeting Actual End: 6:00pm


	16. Green Blade Rises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Brock Lesnar - cold blooded)

The sun was just starting to dip below the horizon when Brock got back to the farm. It stayed light out for a long time in the summer. Plenty of time to do the work that needed to be done.

Even with the setting sun the evening was still hot out, would stay hot all night. Flat dry heat as ground radiated back the warmth that it had soaked up during the burning hours of the day. Brock felt the sweat start to prickle up on his brow and the back of his neck as soon as he had parked the truck and shut off the air conditioning.

Brock didn't like to have to go shopping more than once a month if he could help it. The town was only ten minutes away, but Brock's genuine dislike of dealing with people meant that he did all that he could to minimize his trips, that when Brock did go he packed his truck with groceries and whatever supplies he had needed. Gallons and gallons of milk, loaves of bread that he would freeze back so as to not have to make any unplanned trips to the store. Even as strong as he was, it was going to take Brock a while to carry in all of the plastic bags.

He had corn on his mind and he gathered the first load of groceries, thinking about when he was going to hire the crop duster and how it was time for him to do preventative maintenance on the irrigators. But even as distracted as Brock was, there was no way that he could have missed that high, humming drone that kicked up when he stepped around the front end of his truck.

Brock stared at the snake for a long time, the plastic handles of the grocery bags drawn tight and cutting into the flesh of his arms where they hung. The snake rattled at him. Brock's face became even slicker with sweat, from the heat. There was not even a breatg of a breeze and his skin sweltered under the plastic of the bags.

Brock carried his groceries inside, one armful after another, keeping an eye on the snake each time he passed it by. If Brock would have had to guess, he would have said that the snake was probably around three feet long. A prairie rattler with light brown keeled scales and darker oval blotches all down along the it’s back.

It had coiled up the first time that Brock had passed it, drawing tight and defensive as it shook that most tell tale of warning signs on the end of it's tail. Snakes usually went on their ways quick enough, but this one stayed where it was, rattling at Brock as it's long black tongue flickering out to taste the air again and again when it sensed his presence. It was still there, even after Brock had unloaded the last of the supplies from his truck and gone back into his quiet house. Brock could see it when he looked out the window, almost but not quite camouflaged against the tan gravel.

A lot of people who lived in the country would kill rattlesnakes on sight, if they had children or if they had dogs. Brock had neither. But the snake was still there when Brock had finished putting the food away. The he stopped to think. There were the rifles, sure, neatly racked all along the back wall of his living room. But just as different types of crops required different types of combine headers, there were many types of guns for many different jobs.

Brock got the revolver from the shelf in his laundry room and loaded the cylinder. He held the weight of it, heavy in his hand. Then he went back outside.

The snake was still there. Right where it had been the last time Brock had seen it. Brock crouched down in front of the snake, back far enough that it wouldn't strike at him but close enough that he could still see the black eyes of the thing as they regarded one another.

As Brock crouched down he reached over and tucked the barrel of the gun up into his armpit. Brock pressed the revolver hard into that soft hollow, clamped his arm down tight. He could feel the front sight on the end of the barrel as it dug into the meaty flesh, and Brock waited as the metal was warmed by his body.

Brock waited. He watched the tight curl of the snake, pure muscle, half on the gravel of the drive and half on the green, green grass beyond the edge. It's rattle vibrated too fast to really be seen, disturbing the stubby purple and yellow wildflowers that always grew there. The constant drone of the rattlesnake had filled Brock’s head by then. He was only vaguely aware that there were birds, crying out in the trees, the rustling sound of something, probably a rabbit, picking its way through the brush beyond the woodpile.

Brock waited, until the barrel of the revolver was warm enough that he could not easily tell the metal from his own body. Only then did Brock take the gun out of his armpit, shifted his weight on the balls of his feet as he held it out towards the snake. He could see the instant that it's primitive brain started to track the heat signature of the warmed metal, rearing back slightly, it's flat triangular head tracing back and first and back and forth in front of the muzzle. This close, Brock thought that he could see each and every one of its scales, watched as it's forked tongue flared out, trying to scent for whatever had approached it.

The sky had been a perfect, cloudless blue all day. Clear and empty. The setting sun in the corner of Brock eye was just a white hole in a fine gradient of pink and yellow. Brock turned his head slightly as he looked at the shadows, towering and gigantic. Abstract renderings of the scene stretched out across the driveway - the dark ghosts of Brock and the rattlesnake and the revolver, held out like a peace offering between them.

Brock knew what would happen when he pulled the trigger. He had seen it before, and he could play it back in his head clearer than any movie. With the caliber of the bullet at such a short range, the head of the snake wouldn't be blown off so much as it would just _dissolve_ into a spray of meat and venom and tiny slivers of white bone. The rest of the body would keep moving for a while, would curl and twist, riding out the brainless last nerve impulses of an animal too stupid to know that it was dead.

  
Brock was still watching the shadows, so he didn't see it happen directly. Instead he just saw the dark silhouette move, the same instant that his body was flooded with immediate pain as the snake struck and hooked it's fangs into the back of his hand.


	17. Black Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Damien Sandow - searching)

There hadn't been fresh snow in some time and the street long since been plowed, but it had been far too cold for any of the drifts to melt. Deep, chunky berms had built up on either side of the narrow road, broken up only where people had shoveled their driveways out. Damien had to squint his eyes against where the high sun threw blinding white reflections across the icy crust as he looked for the address numbers on the rows of trailer homes.

When Damien finally located the right address and parked his car, the clap of the door shutting behind him set off a chain reaction of barking dogs that split the quiet afternoon in half. Damien locked his car doors right away, stuffed his keys and his hands into the lined pockets of his coat as he glanced around. The area where a car would have been parked in front of this particular single-wide was thick with snow. Damien wouldn't have thought anyone lived there at all of not for the well worn track of footprints that cut over the bank of plowed snow and across where a walkway must have been covered to the buried steps in front of the door.

Damien’s nose burned with the cold as he picked his way along that footpath, careful, and knocked on the door. There wasn't any immediate response. Damien could have sworn he heard someone moving on the other side. When he tried to peek in the window it took a second before he realized he couldn't see anything past the plastic sheeting that had been sealed up against the inside of the glass. Damien curled one hand tighter around his car keys, used the other one to keep knocking, hard, until -

“Fuckin’ hell, just gimme a second!”

The door swung open just wide enough for the man inside to step forward and fill the open space. He looked like he had just woken up from sleeping in all of his clothes, a knit cap pulled down over his ears, two mostly zippered sweatshirts and a heavier canvas jacket that was flecked with bits of paint. There was a faded yellow bruise on the side of his jaw, knuckles scabbed over but still raw looking as he leaned one shoulder against the doorframe as he squinted out against the brightness of the day.

“Yeah?”

“Are you Dean Ambrose?”

“What of it?” Ambrose was chewing gum as he looked up and down and he grinned at Damien then, obnoxious. Like Damien wasn’t one hundred percent aware how out of place he was, standing there in the frigid afternoon.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few moments.” Damien tucked the tail of his scarf back beneath the lapel of his coat, nervous despite himself. It was no longer as bitterly cold as it had been a few weeks before, but the air between them was still clouded by their words. “May I come in?”

“You got a warrant?”

“What? No. I'm not a police officer, I -”

“Okay, _Detective_. Whatever. If you don't have a warrant I'm still not gonna-”

“I'm not with law enforcement at all.” Damien rushed, not wanting to get another door slammed in his face.“I am just looking for someone.”

Ambrose paused for a beat, stared at Damien for a second. “Okay. And?”

“And. May I come in _now_?” Damien asked stiffly, had held tight to keep his teeth from chattering.

He could see that Ambrose was shivering a little as well, but instead of doing the logical thing and moving the conversation indoors Ambrose straightened and grinned and said

“Nah. I still think we'd better stay out here. What'd you wanna ask me?”

Damien took a deep breath, as if he expected that the chill of the air would fortify him. It didn't. “I'm looking for Cody. Rhodes. Someone told me you might be able to -”

“So, what, someone told you I'm a fuckin’ methhead?” Ambrose’s grin slid into a sneer. “Fuck off.”

It wasn't exactly a secret around town that Cody had become involved in -.That he had some problems. But it wasn't something that was widely discussed either, at least not among polite company. As far as Damien knew it had started after high school, but Damien had already been gone for a couple years at that point and hadn’t known anything for sure.

Damien hadn't seen Cody in almost seven years, hadn't thought about him at all in at least half of that time. But ever since their chance encounter at the gas station Damien had been able to think about precious little else other than how -. How bad, Cody had looked. How the blood had dripped down his face seemingly without notice, left tracks down Cody's mouth and across chin and into the stretched out collar of his shirt. How there had been a flash of recognition in his eyes, fixed and bright, the split second before his teeth were digging into Damien’s hand.

If he could just find Cody again, then Cody would listen to him. Damien was sure of it. It was just finding him that was the problem. There were arrest records, a series of mugshots that left Damien feeling increasingly distraught, and then for the longest time… nothing. Nothing in the public record, anyway, and Damien didn't know what else he was supposed to do. After all, no one could expect Damien to go to the worst parts of town and actually talk to those types people.

Then there had been a long stretch of days at the beginning of January where the high temperatures had failed to crack zero.

Damien had worried himself to distraction. He had no idea what type of conditions Cody lived in, but he could guess that ‘warm’ and ‘safe’ would not rank among the distinguishing characteristics. Cody needed help. If he could just find Cody again he could talk to him, try and get him into one of the treatment programs up in the city that Damien had spent hours researching on sleepless nights or with the door of his office closed during slow afternoons at the hospital.

It had unsettled him, how much he found that he still cared about Cody. Damien wasn't used to caring about people. He had never been one for forming emotional connections - that type of thing was for those who couldn't rely on their own intelligence the way that Damien could. Damien hadn't know that it was possible for him to be worried enough about anything to set his pride aside, but that long, desperate cold snap had done it.

Dead ends and wasted days and now Damien was using yet another weekend to follow up on the strongest lead he’d had to date. Although, calling it a ‘strong lead’ was a bit of a hyperbole.

The last person Damien had spoken to had informed him that he could hook Damien up with some weed if Damien so desired. Which had been less than helpful. But then he had revealed that he also knew a guy who knew a couple other guys who might know another guy who cooked, which was. That sentence had been almost inscrutable. But it was still leagues upon leagues better than just being told to fuck off for the fiftieth time.

And now here he was. Having just been told to ‘fuck off’ yet again, about to end up right back at square one.

“Wait!” Damien stepped up the last step, reached out to brace the door and stop it from slamming in his face.

Ambrose stopped trying to shut the door. When he stepped back out into the stoop he wasn't slouching anymore and his insulted sneer had transformed into something more dangerous.

“Alright, buddy.” Ambrose actually cracked his knuckles, then, which Damien might have laughed at if he had thought it was an empty threat. “You really wanna do this here?”

“Wait.” Damien said again, then, acutely aware of the scrapes on Ambrose’s knuckles. Damien might have had some height advantage if he wouldn't have been standing down a step, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway - Damien had always relied on his intellect. He had never hit anyone in his life. “Please. I need to find him.”

“Why?” Ambrose looked him up and down again. "You seriously lookin' to score?

“I am not. I'm just. He is. Cody was special, to me. I want to make sure that he's alright. I've been worried about him.”

The words were almost physically painful to utter. Damien hated talking about his personal life with even his longest term acquaintances, much less random strangers who had moments before threatened him with violence. But it must have been the right thing to say because Ambrose relented, posture shifting back ever so slightly.

“If you're that fuckin’ worried why don't you just call the cops? I bet they're lookin’ for him too.”

“I do not wish to involve law enforcement in this.” Damien did not say that he knew they wouldn't be able to help Cody, that as far as Damien was concerned he himself was the only person who would be capable of doing any good. “That would only complicate matters.”

Ambrose looked a little more approving at that, but it was only the slightest improvement. And it didn't lessen the sting at all when he said

“I hate to be the one to shit in your salad -” and wasn't that the most charming turn of phrase “- but the dude's a ghost. I haven't seen Cody in years. I dunno if he's even still alive.”

“What if. Do you know someone else, perhaps, who might be able to help me find him? Please.”

“Nope. I’d help you if I could, man, but I dunno nothin’ about any of that.” Ambrose shook his head and Damien, again defeated, didn't even try to stop the door from closing after Ambrose added “Now get the fuck off my porch.”


	18. Bloodflood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose, The Ascension - uninvited guests)

Dean had gone to bed alone and mostly sober, for once. Which made it all the more surprising when he woke up with someone crouched over him in the darkness.

He had been sleeping on his stomach so couldn't see anything at first other than his crumpled up pillow. Dean had no idea who it was that had one hand on Dean's bare shoulder and was jostling him, back and forth. Not really shaking him, not violent, but it was enough that Dean's first split second thought upon waking up was one of panic and he froze. His body went stock still and stiff against the hand as adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream as Dean tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.

Dean's heartbeat was pounding in his ears but he slowly realized that through the rush of blood that someone was talking to him, and then Dean recognized Viktor’s voice.

“Hey, hey hey hey hey, hey Dean. Wake up. Wake up wake up wake up-”

Viktor didn't seem to notice that Dean had already jolted into consciousness, even though Dean had gone tense and started to resist his pushing hand. He just kept trying to wake Dean up until Dean rolled over onto his back, knocked Victor's hand away with a slap as he squinted in the darkness.

“Viktor? Dude. What the fuck. Why fuck’re you in my trailer?”

“Shit’s fucked up, man. It's fucked up real bad.”

“Jesus Christ.” Dean sat up, braced himself on one arm as he rubbed at his eyes with the other, trying to get his head together. Autumn was getting cool enough that Dean had been in his sleeping bag instead of just on top of it, and it was slumped down around his hips as he wiped the drool off the side of his face. “Viktor. Slow down. What the fuck is happening?”

“Viktor killed a guy.”

Dean whipped his head to the side and for the first time he noticed Konnor standing in the doorway that led from Dean’s bedroom out into the short hallway to the kitchen. There was a second of silence that seemed to stretch out forever and Dean couldn’t hear anything other than his own breathing, the soft static-y shushing sound of rain falling on the roof. It was dark, no lights except for the low glow of the street lamp that threaded through the parted window blinds, but Dean's eyes were adjusted well enough to the dark that he could see the snarl of fury curl across Viktor’s face the split second before he spun to face Konnor and shouted

“I didn't fucking kill him!”

“Well if you didn't then you fuckin’ should have!”

Dean shot up off the mattress, pushed himself off of the wall that the bed was wedged up against as he scrambled out of the sleeping bag. He tripped a little before he managed to get both feet on the floor, whisper-yelling

“Shut the fuck up, huh? Do you know how thin my fucking walls are? You want the whole goddamn street to hear you?” Dean was on the same level as them once he was standing, felt less small and a little more in control except for the way that everything was off the rails and he had no idea what was going on or what to do.

With the adrenaline panic ramping up each time one of the other men so much as twitched, Dean could see that there was a dark smudged line across Konnor’s neck like a high water mark from a flood and that he grungy shirt Viktor was wearing looked peppered. Like he has been spattered with something. They all flinched when Dean hit the light switch and. Yep. That was definitely blood.

“What the fuck. Did you do.” Dean snagged a pair of jeans off the floor, stumbled a little bit as he stepped into them, put out a hand to catch himself against the windowsill. He was not having this conversation in his fucking boxer shorts. He leaned down snatched his smokes and the lighter off the milk crate he used as an end table, Dean's calloused fingertips were traitorous and clumsy as he spun the wheel of the black plastic Bic once, twice, three times as Konnor spoke before he could get the end lit.

“That fuckin’ bible basher came to the house looking for Cody. He was gonna kill me this time.” Konnor touched the mark on his neck, the back of his head, the ever-present scabs on his arms, again and again like he wasn't even thinking about it.

Dean was only vaguely aware that some beef existed between these guys and the religious fanatics who lived outside of town. Specifically Luke Harper, who had been locked up a few years back when Dean had been doing his own time and was firmly in the category of not-to-be-fucked-with. Still, Dean couldn't grasp at any of the details and he didn't want to derail the tenuous progress he had made since reasoning really didn't matter. The only thing Dean really gave a fuck about was

“So you -” Dean looked at Viktor, saw the fine trembling of Viktor’s hands that mirrored his own “- you, what, you shot him?”

“Nah.” Konnor shook his head in Dean's peripheral vision “Viktor snuck up and bashed his head in.”

“Okay. And you're sure you killed him?”

The two of them talked over each other, still whispering as loud as they could. Dean blew out a cloud of smoke, feeling like he was trapped in a nightmare as Konnor said “Yeah,” at the same time Viktor said “No.” Then -

“He was still breathing.”

“Well he probably ain't anymore.”

“You've gotta call the fucking cops.” Both of them turned to stare at Dean, looking as shocked as Dean felt that those words had just come from his mouth.

“What the-”

“Not the cops, the fuckin. The fuckin’ hospital people. The ambulance.” Dean snapped his fingers as the word finally came to him, realized he had pretty much chewed through the filter on his cigarette, grinding it between his teeth as he tried to think. “You gotta tell them that some guy's -. Some guy's fucked up at the house, and then you gotta get the fuck out of town.

“No fucking way. I ain't calling in shit.”

Dean realized belatedly that arguing the point was going to be useless. Viktor, who looked shaken as hell, maybe could have been swayed. But Dean could tell Konnor wasn't going to budge. Dean felt almost mute with the panic that was clawing in his chest at the same time as he wanted to shout - _You idiots came here. You dragged me into this. If this fucking guy dies, even if he lives, I might get roped in on this whole fuck up too_.

He had fucked up some stuff in his life, sure, but it wasn't like someone had been living in that Cracker Barrel when he burnt it. Dean wasn't going to rat out the two assholes twitching around his trailer, but he wasn't going to get caught up in murder either.

“Okay.” Dean said, took another deep breath, and when the two of them just stared at him blankly he said “Okay, yeah, that was a dumbfuck idea. Don't call. But you've gotta go. You've gotta lay low for a while, go hide out somewhere. Don't fuckin' get caught.”

It wasn't that easy to get them to scram, but Dean was determined. In the end, Dean had to give Konnor and Viktor the fourteen dollars out of his wallet and both his boxes of cereal before he shoved them out the door. Which Konnor and Viktor had broken when they'd forced their way in, but. Dean could fix that later. After he finished dealing with this fucking mess.

There was a payphone at the gas station, an old relic, and Dean knew that the security cameras didn't actually record anything. Unless they had finally been fixed? Not likely. And it didn't matter, besides, because Dean couldn't think of anything else but he knew he had to do something.


	19. Square Hammer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Authors of Pain - custom order)

When Akam and Rezar had been told that they were being sent to live with their uncle Paul Ellering for a year, they had considered it a minor victory. 

It was proof that their mom couldn't handle the truth that they embodied. She just didn't want to hear that life was pain and all happiness was a lie people told themselves to try and escape the crushing inevitability of death. It definitely wasn't because she was going back to school and had been switched to working nights. And it had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't trust the two thirteen year olds to be alone by themselves for extended periods anymore, not after that one time they had given themselves haircuts and ruined the walls on accident with purple dye when they colored their bangs.

“Well you've sure grown since I saw you last.” Uncle Paul had said to them as they stood in his living room with their suitcases “Little Sunny and -”

“It's Akam now.” Akam had said, fiddling with one of the chains on his pants.

“And Rezar.”

Uncle Paul had cocked an eyebrow as he looked up at them. “Occam’s razor, huh? You boys big fans of philosophy?”

“Only the philosophy that to live is to suffer.” Rezar had sniffed, flicking his hair off to the side only for it to fall right back into his face.

“Boys.” Their mom was standing off to the side, her fingertips already pressed against the worry lines in between her closed eyes. “For once, could you just not -”

Anyways, their first impression that Uncle Paul was a boring old person was pretty spot on. But he was actually alright. He had made it clear from the beginning that he wouldn't tolerate any direct disrespect. He wouldn't hesitate to reach up and snatch Akam’s phone away and keep it until he apologized for being rude at the dinner table. Otherwise Uncle Paul didn't seem overly concerned by things that adults always hated. 

He didn't care that Akam and Rezar hung up blackout curtains and covered the walls of their room in posters immediately after moving into his house, and was seemingly unfazed when they played their music at maximum volume. That part was actually a little disappointing, since pissing off Uncle Paul had been the whole reason that Akam had turned the speakers up so loud in the first place. Instead Rezar got tired of the sound hurting his ears and just ended up turning it down himself.

Uncle Paul made them do chores, sure, but he never pushed them to try out for sports. The coaches at school had been bothering them about it almost non stop since they had transferred, but Uncle Paul had just shrugged. He said that it was their choice what they did in their free time, and he didn't go back on his word. As long as Rezar and Akam cut the grass and took out the trash on schedule Uncle Paul never bothered them about wanting to spend all their time in their dark room, writing the type of really raw poetry that expressed their true souls. 

One time Uncle Paul even asked what they had been working on and Rezar had begrudgingly read him one of their poems. It had been about how the darkness of a grave was really a sweet embrace. But instead of laughing or sighing or rolling his eyes, Uncle Paul had just listened, nodded after Rezar had finished, and said

“I'm impressed.”

“...really?”

“Yes. You developed some good imagery there in the fourth stanza. Very creative, rhyming ‘maggots’ and ‘regrets’.”

Which. It wasn't like they wanted his approval or anything. They definitely didn't care, but. Yeah, Uncle Paul was pretty okay for a boring old person. 

Usually. 

However, it was definitely not cool of Uncle Paul to ask them what type of apples they wanted to pack in their school lunches that week while Rezar and Akam were busy trying to look cool for the hot goth lady with the pentagram tattoo who worked at the Wal-Mart bakery.

\---

“Hey, Paige? Do you want to go see if those muffins are done? I can watch the counter for a second.”

Paige looked back at Summer Rae, and Summer saw the look of confusion cross Paige’s face in the second before she remembered the code. Summer cocked her head over to where the two teenagers had been whispering back and forth together over in the produce section. It looked like they’d finally summoned the courage to walk over towards the bakery counter. 

Paige watched them approach for a second, let them get close enough that they couldn't just turn around and walk away without making it even more awkward. Then Paige rolled her eyes and wandered back towards the cooling racks and away from the counter.

“Thanks.” Paige said as she passed by, tapping her knuckles against the back of Summer’s hand. 

The two boys hesitated for a second when they saw Paige walk away. Summer watched them milling around by the donut case as they tried to decide whether or not they had come too far to turn back. 

Summer had always thought that Paige was too rude back in high school. After all, Paige had always scoffed when Summer answered a question wrong in class and had called her prom dress “extra trashy.” But becoming adults had mellowed them both out a bit, it seemed. They still weren't best friends or anything - Paige never accepted any of Summer’s invitations to her church - but they had gotten closer ever since they had started working together. 

They had even devised the system for trading off who dealt with which type of terrible customer. Paige took care of stonefacing the angry parents who didn't believe that it took more than ten minutes to bake and decorate an entire custom cake. Summer handled all the painfully awkward black clothed teenagers who wanted to stare at Paige while trying to think of questions to ask about bakery orders.

When Summer Rae had been fourteen, she had wanted nothing more in the world than to get a really cool tribal tattoo with butterflies in it on her lower back. Summer may have gone on to make plenty of less than wise life decisions, but at least she had made most of them as an adult and hadn't gotten herself stuck with a tribal butterfly back tattoo. 

Which was to say, Summer didn't mind turning the kids away gently before Paige could tear down their fragile egos. These two may have been big, each one easily twice as large as she was, but despite their size Summer could tell that they were still young.

The two teenagers didn't seem to be in any type of hurry. Maybe they thought they could dig their heels in and wait for Paige to come back. But they were blocking the donut case, so Summer caught the eye of the taller one and smiled. “Can I help you boys with anything?”

They froze like rabbits in the road, darted glances at one another and then stepped forward. Summer could see the way that they were looking back past her into the back of the bakery, probably trying to gauge the likelihood of Paige coming back up front. 

‘ _ Not a chance, boys _ ’ Summer thought to herself, putting on her best vacant customer service smile. “Were you looking to make a special order?”

The taller one scoffed, and Summer Rae couldn't be sure since the kid’s choppy purple bangs were mostly obscuring his face, but she was pretty sure that he rolled his eyes at her.

“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I'm sure you don't have black frosting here.”

“Actually, we can do that no problem.” Trying not to laugh, Summer grabbed one of the custom cake forms and a pen and asked “So, black frosting. Got it. And what flavor of cake do you want?”

“Uh…”

“We can do chocolate or vanilla or a swirl of the two.”

“Swirl!” The smaller one piped up, sounding genuinely excited for a second until Summer saw his brother elbow him in the side, at which point he looked off and muttered “It doesn't matter, all of this is meaningless anyway.”

“Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and mark you down for the swirl. Now, did you want blavk icing for the message on top too, or -”


	20. Circadian Rhythm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Sami Zayn, Dean Ambrose - winter weather advisory)

Sami heard the knocking at his door just after the sun had started to dip below the horizon. It had been nothing but white outside of his window for most of the day but now the sunset was blinding, orange and yellow light that bounced off of all the fresh snow and made everything seem saturated and surreal. Sami checked through the peephole, opened the door. Dean stepped around him neatly, walked right into Sami’s apartment as if he owned the place.

“How's it hangin’ dude?” Dean had a floppy eared hat pulled down low over his head, mostly hidden under the hood of his heavy jacket.

“Dean?” Sami blinked, caught off guard as he shut his door. “How'd you get here? I thought all the roads were closed.”

“Yeah, I couldn't get a ride so I just hoofed it.”

Dean toed out of his boots and shed clumps of snow all over Sami’s doormat. He had a fine dusting of powder across his shoulders, on top if his hood. He would have made an almost festive figure if, instead of carrying a sack of gifts, Santa showed up holding five out of a six pack of beer through the empty hole in the plastic noose.

“You walked all the way across town?”

“It ain't that big of a town.” Dean shrugged out of his jacket, hung it up in the hook next to the door. “So don't worry about it. Gotta get my exercise don't I?”

“But it's freezing out there!”

“How else would I keep my beers cold? Seriously, Sami, don't worry about it.” Dean cracked the tab on one of the aforementioned beers, looking at Sami appraisingly. “Snow storm was pretty bad last night, figured you could use some company.”

“You didn't have to come all this way. I'm fine, Dean, really.” Sami insisted, bristling when Dean scoffed and said

“Uh, clearly not.”

“What?”

“You don't clench your teeth like that when things are fine.”

Sami very carefully relaxed his jaw.

The last time there had been a blizzard, Sami had found the wrecked motorcycle and the deer and the road slicked with blood and he had somehow managed to hold it together well enough that he didn't even have full blown anxiety attack until after he had tried to explain what had happened to the paramedics. That had been in October, most of the trees has still been full with yellow-green leaves and the snow had downed branches all over town. Then all that snow had melted and Sami had maybe, maybe almost fooled himself into forgetting that there was still more to come.

Now in the second week of December, this storm had brought a winter weather advisory and shut down almost everything. Sami had been given the day off work this time, and no one had called him to come in, which was a good. So Sami had spent the entire day at home trying to stop looking out at the snow packed parking lot, trying not to think about how if something went wrong no one would be able to come, trying not to reorganize his kitchen cabinets any more than he already had.

Talking to Finn had helped. Until it hadn't.

Now Sami wasn't sure which cabinet his bowls were in, and he must have had a weird look on his face because Dean blinked at him and said

“Listen, man, it's not even really about that alright? I just wanted to hang out and run up someone else's heating bill. You can put on one of those fucked up food shows that you love so much...”

“You mean Chopped?” Sami perked up.

“Yeah. Or that one where he tries to buy your soul.” Dean shrugged. “Whatever. It's your TV.”

“It's my couch too, but that didn't stop you.”

Having someone else around always helped Sami calm down. Dean kept him distracted enough that Sami was even able to mostly stop looking out the windows at the snow, where the sunset had turned the snowdrifts shades of red. Staring out at that wasn't going to help his nerves at all. Sami had been too anxious to even think about food for most of the day, but he ended up eating almost half a box of cereal while they watched the contestants fumble with the durians. That was, of course, after Sami paused the show to find which cabinet he had reorganized his bowls into.

Halfway through the fourth episode, Sami's phone started to blare. Warning klaxons sounded and he almost jumped out of his skin as he dug the phone out of his pocket. At least Sami wasn't the only one who had been startled.

“Jesus Christ!” Dean pushed his hair back out of his eyes, watching Sami warily “What the fuck was that? Are the aliens invading?”

“No, uh.” Sami looked down as he silenced the notification. “They just closed the roads.”

“Yeah, man.” Dean leaned back into the couch. “It's all been closed since last night. I think your weather alerts are fucked up.”

“Not here. I've got it set up so I get notifications for the University too.”

“Aww, that's sweet.” Dean grinned “So is sexy professor gonna get trapped at home too? I can clear out if you wanna call him.”

“No.” Sami said, setting his phone off on the side table as he kept his eyes on the TV. “They’ve had classes cancelled since this morning, so we already talked. Earlier. It's fine.”

That had...maybe not come out as lighthearted as Sami had been trying for. And he did not think for a second that Dean had missed it, even though all Dean did was raise an eyebrow and say

“Cool, cool. So are you guys doin’ holidays together or some shit?”

Which was. “I don't know.”

“Um.”

“It'll depend on if the roads are good enough to make the trip. Maybe.” Sami could feel his eyes getting hot as he got up to put his bowl in the sink and definitely, definitely not to pace back and forth like he wanted to.

Even worse than the fact that the storm had his anxiety was off the charts was the low, certain hurt that Sami could feel gnawing deeper into his chest whenever he thought about the conversation with Finn. Knowing that bad things were coming didn't make easier when they finally came to pass.

“Okay, Sami, why. Why do you look like you're about to cry? Isn't it good that you're gonna get together?”

“Yeah.” Sami sniffed. “It's great. It'll be great.”

“Yeah. So. That's happy, right?” Dean asked, and Sami when nodded, still sniffling and clearly not fooling anyone, Dean sighed and leaned back “Do you want to just tell me what the fuck is going on? I'm so confused right now. Everything's alright, right?”

“Yeah.” Sami said, sniffed and pressed the heel of his hand in between his eyebrows. “Everything's alright.”

It wasn't the first time Sami had realized how difficult it was to explain his emotions to Dean. After all, Dean had told Sami once that if Sami was going to be paying off his mountain of student loans until he died no matter what he did then Sami didn't really need to worry about the debt, right? Dean had apparently never over thought a decision in his life and couldn't understand why Sami had so much stress about the fact that Finn had been his TA when they first met.

Back when Sami had first spilled the beans to Dean about his relationship with Finn, Dean had immediately gone into full protection mode. It had been worryingly difficult to get Dean to believe that Sami had been crying not because Finn had ever mistreated him. Dean just hadn't understood why Sami still felt guilty sometimes about dating Finn, who was a few years older and has been the TA of one of Sami's classes when they had met. Even though they hadn't even gone out for the first time until after the class was over. Even though he was happier with Finn than he had ever been with anyone else.

“Yeah.” Sami said again as he leaned back against his counter, looked out his window. It was mostly dark out there now, but the streetlights had come in and the snow was still falling, which didn't help at all. “We were on the phone for a while, and I was sick of just talking about how worried I was about the storm and how much I was stressing out, so I asked him to tell me about his day and. And he got really excited. He was talking about how he’s starting to look at postdoc positions.”

When Sami looked away from the window Dean was still staring at him, guarded and careful. Sami dropped his head into his hands, knowing that he was being dramatic but not really able to help it.

“Alright, so, that's bad?”

“No, it's great!” Sami said, muffled words into his palms “Finn was telling me he's in contact with a few programs already. He was really excited about them. They're great positions too, you know, good schools. Texas A&M. University of California. Northwestern.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Sami laughed, feeling like he was going to cry again like he had after he'd gotten off the phone earlier.

“That last one’s in Chicago right?”

“Northwestern? Yeah, basically.”

“Well. That's not as bad.”

“But that's the thing! I don't want Finn to feel like he has to choose Northwestern if the other programs are better.” Sami sighed, scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I don't know if we should just break up now or if we should try to make it work, I mean, we could keep doing the long distance thing or I could try to look for jobs where he ends up but I'll still have way less than five years of experience, and maybe he doesn't want me following him anyways and he's just waiting to tell me until after the holidays so I won't be sad, and I just. I just don't know what to do.”

“Listen.” Dean said. He reached out to pat the empty couch cushion next to him and only patted more insistently when Sami shook his head and refused to sit. “Listen, Sami, you want to know something?”

“What?”

“This thing with Finn? It's either gonna work out or it's not.”

“That's. That's not really helpful, Dean.”

“Well, it's fuckin’ true. And nothing’s even for sure yet, right? Best thing you can do is sit back down and toss me the remote. I know you wanna see what they’re gonna do with the gummy worms and the duck breast.”

Sami hesitated for a second before he sat back down. Kicked his feet up. He knew that Dean had a good heart, but the guy was really terrible at giving relationship advice. Still, Sami felt a little better having gotten it all out, having put into words the nervous thoughts that had been churning in his head for most of the day. And he really did want to know what the chefs would do with those gummy worms.


	21. Stood A Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose - bench warrant)  
> Probably implied by the summary, but this contains some even more unpleasant interactions with law enforcement

Dean knew that just staring down into the engine compartment of Heath's van wasn't going do a hell of a lot of good. But Heath had insisted, shifting from foot to foot with his hands jammed down in his coat pockets. There hadn't been any real snow since the big storm back in October, but that didn't mean that it wasn't freezing. A layer of frost sparkled in the gas station lights and the thin purple dawn, their breath turning into plumes of white that filled the negative space between them.

The hinges on the hood of his van protested as Dean lifted it open and looked down for a second. Then Dean turned and leaned against the front grill of the van, stared at Heath. Heath was wearing a faded knit hat with a Tampa Bay Lightning logo on it. Dean knew for a fact that Heath had never been to Florida in his life. The hat had a big blue pompom on top that wobbled when Heath pulled it down further over his ears, hiding tips that were red from the cold.

“What's broke on it this time?” Heath asked, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“You said it stopped with a clunk and it now it just won't start?”

“Yeah.”

“It's might be your timing belt.” Dean was just happy that the van’d had enough manners to break down without the kids in it, and in the 7-11 parking lot and not on the edge of the highway somewhere. “At least you better fuckin’ hope it's your timing belt.”

“What's that?” Heath bent over to look down at the engine even though Dean knew damn well he had no idea what any of the parts in there did.

“What's what?”

“The timing belt.”

Dean rolled his eyes, teeth chattering as little bit as he took another long sip of his Slurpee. He definitely should have gone with a coffee instead. It was way too fuckin’ cold to be Slurpee weather. Dean just hadn't been able to resist when Chad had told him that he could just grab whatever drink he wanted on the house, being that Dean was out here doing good samaritan shit as the sun rose on Black Friday.

If Chad wouldn't have been so busy he might have talked Dean out if getting a cup full of blue ice when it was below freezing outside. Chad had been distracted though, hadn't had much time for Dean in between dealing with all the customers. The day after Thanksgiving was about as busy as the gas station ever got, people either going to or coming home from the early morning sales rush in the city or just at the Wal-Mart. Dean didn't fuckin’ know, he had never been much of a shopper. But Dean was definitely an eater and a drinker, and he had done plenty of both the day before.

Thanksgiving was usually bullshit except for how it was a great excuse to get fucked up and sprawl out in front if his couch watching the walls spin. Not that Dean ever needed an excuse, but.

The fact was that Dean had still been sleeping off his combination food coma and Thanksgiving hangover from the night before when Heath had called him, sounding like he was about to crack. It was too fucking early for Dean to be awake if he didn't have to work, but he had gotten his ass out of bed and trudged down to the 7-11 anyways. He just wasn't in the best mood about it.

“The timing belt? Well, it helps make the van go.”

Heath scowled. “I'm not an idiot.”

“Oh-kay, my bad.” Dean held his hands up, placating and a little ridiculous since he still had the Slurpee in one of them. “The timing belt is what makes sure the crankshaft and the camshaft move at the right times. So that the engine valves open and close when they're supposed to, y'know, during the cylinder -”

“Fine, Dean, geez. I get it.” Heath sighed, tugged his hat down tighter over his head. “You can fix it though, right? I've gotta be at the Wal-Mart in an hour.”

“To work or to shop?”

“Does… does that change anything?” Heath looked genuinely confused.

“Fuck, I mean, no. Not really. Just meant that you might wanna figure out another way to get there if it's real important. I dunno if I can fix the belt that's on there. That one might be too fucked, but if that's the case I can put a new one on.”

Dean set his Slurpee down on the cold engine block, rubbed at his forehead with the drips of condensation on his cold fingertips. “But either way it's gonna take a while. I'll hav’ta see if Blake’ll let me borrow some tools cause I know I don't have a tension gauge layin' around.The thing with the timing belt is that you gotta make sure it's on there just right or it'll fuck up.”

Dean thought that Heath looked a little pale as he nodded and tossed Dean the keys. But that was probably just the cold.

“Okay, yeah. Then I'll start walkin’ that way in a lil bit. Kevin's been cuttin’ my hours again and I just know that he's looking for an excuse to -” Heath cut himself off, tapping one fingernail on the edge of the engine compartment. He wasn't looking at Dean. He was turned around and looking back at something that Dean couldn't see past the raised hood of the van. “Uh, Dean? You're not in trouble are you?”

“Nah. Not that I know of.” Dean said, after thinking about it for a second. “Why, what's up?”

Dean didn't really give Heath a chance to answer, though, before he leaned to the side and peeked around the hood. He saw the cop car right away, parked at the gas pump directly behind the van. Even if Dean wouldn't have had a perfect line of sight to who was behind the wheel, he probably would have figured it out on instinct.

Dean could see that Orton was staring right in their direction with his dumbshit reflective aviator shades on. Even though there was zero need for sunglasses in the weak morning light. What a horse's ass. Randy Orton was the type of guy who'd found a way to continue his schoolyard bullying into a paying profession. He hassled Dean almost every time their paths crossed, and Dean had long lost track of how many times Orton had seen fit to try and ruin his fucking day. And it looked like this was gonna be one more for the list.

Dean ducked his head back under the hood of Heath's van. He hadn't done anything worse than normal recently, but that it didn't matter. If Orton wanted to find some reason to fuck with Dean then he would just make something up. It was just a matter of time. Not if, when. Dean was just going to have to put up with it when Orton frisked him because he didn’t have any fucking choice or any fucking power and -

“Dean? Are you alright?”

The parking lot was busy enough that there was no way that Dean could have distinguished the sound of cop car tires from any other vehicle, except for the way that he definitely could tell that Orton was driving right towards them.

Dean was breathing hard as he stared down at the engine block, seeing nothing. There was blood pounding in his ears, and no matter how bad he wanted to run he knew that would be just about the worst idea possible. When Dean twitched his head to the side he saw that Orton had pulled up right next to them, was getting out of the cruiser with his hand already resting on the butt of the gun at his hip and.

Dean stayed very still. Kept his hands right where they were on the frame of the car and didn't say anything.

“Hello, um, Officer, is there anything -” Heath started, sounding shaken already, but he didn't get far before Orton cut him off

“Turn around, hands on the vehicle where I can see them.” Orton said, and Dean thought that was a little unnecessary. Dean already had his hands on the fucking van, didn't he?

“What the fuck did I say?”

Dean grit his teeth. “My hands are already on the -”

“Not you Ambrose. You, sit there -” Orton gestured to the empty bit of cement next to the humming silver cooler where the bags of ice were kept up against the exterior wall of the gas station. “- and shut the fuck up. Slater, if you don't start following directions I'm going to interpret your noncompliance resisting arrest.”

Dean felt all the air go out of his lungs, felt like he was somewhere far away even as his body moved automatically to sit on the ground where Orton had pointed. What the fuck. This didn't make any goddamn sense. Heath kept his nose cleaner than anyone Dean knew. Dean watched as Heath turned around and put his hands on the window of the van, trembling like a leaf when Orton started to pat him down.

Dean couldn't do anything other than sit there with his back against the cooler, knees drawn up to his chest with his hands hanging down limp in front of him. The cement was cold under his ass and he was itching for a smoke but didn't dare reach into his pocket, watching as everyone in the crowded parking lot stopped to stare at Heath the same way that Dean was staring. Heath didn't seem to know what was going on, and Dean didn't either. Except for how he did know one thing for sure - Heath was fucked.

“I'm sorry.” Heath was saying, as if it would do any good. “I'm sorry, I don' know what I did -”

Orton did something then that Dean didn't quite catch. A quick move that buckled Heath's knees so that Heath stumbled forward a step and ended up pressed against the door of the van while Orton wrenched his arms behind his back. Heath was breathing rough but he didn't struggle as Orton zipped his wrists together in the plastic handcuffs. There was no reason for Orton to be getting rough with Heath like that except for the fact that Orton was just the worst type of fucker.

“You have a bench warrant out on you, Slater. Failure to pay fines and driving without insurance. Remember when I gave you those tickets, huh? What did you think would happen, you could just ignore it?”

“But I swear I paid ‘em! I went into the DMV and I showed ‘em my proof that I had paid it up and -” Heath just kept talking. Dean wished that he could yell at Heath to just keep his mouth shut and not say anything to make it worse.

Orton yanked on the plastic straps again, hard. Zipped the cuffs tighter. Heath grimaced and turned his head to the side to put his cheek against the window, facing away from Dean, so that Dean lost sight of his frantic eyes and could only see the big pompom on his hat as it flopped against the van.


	22. Float On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Heath Slater - jail release)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updating Mon/Tue/Wed this week

Heath's left thumb had gone buzzing and numb when Orton had zipped the cuffs too-tight on Heath’s wrists and shoved him in the back of the cop car. The dull rubbery feeling radiated down into his palm of his hand, and it didn't go away even though Heath had rubbed and rubbed and rubbed at it all three days that he had spent in jail. The nerves just hadn't been able to wake up.

Heath couldn't relate. Maybe his sleeping thumb could think that it was having a nightmare, but the rest of Heath couldn't fool himself into thinking that his situation was anything other than terrifyingly real. It would have been nice to think that he was going to wake up from this, but Heath knew better. He had been so worried about everything that he hadn't been able to settle into anything other than a fitful doze all weekend.

He had used his one phone call to call his mom before he had been transferred to the county jail for the weekend. When Heath had been told that he was gonna have to wait until Monday for the government offices to reopen his biggest worry had been about the kids, but his mom had promised that she’d have it handled. It wasn't the first time one of her boys had called her from jail. But it was the first time for Heath, and knowing that set a stone on his heart. But at least he knew that the kids would be taken care of. They’d be safe and they wouldn’t think that their dad had just up and disappeared and abandoned them. 

But Heath still had plenty of other things to worry about, and nothing but time. 

It could have been worse, really, spending the weekend up in the county jail. No one bothered him and by some coincidence Heath’s cousin Roger had been there too, so he had even known someone to talk to. Heath guessed that Roger’d been getting in trouble with the pills again, but he was still a good guy. Roger had done his best to keep Heath busy talking about mindless stuff to pass the time so that he wouldn't dwell on the fact that his life was going to be in shambles when he got out.

It hadn't worked. But Heath had appreciated it all the same.

When Monday finally rolled around Heath was more nervous than a short nun at a penguin shoot, but in the end it was all so frustratingly simple. Heath had to sit around and wait for almost the entire day, but when they finally got to his case and checked the records everything was taken care of in about fifteen minutes. 

Heath hadn't been lying when he’d said that he showed his proof of insurance down at the DMV and paid his tickets. It was right there in the system. Someone had just made a mistake. Hadn't voided the ticket out like they were supposed to and so Heath had ended up with a warrant out on him automatically when it went unpaid, ended up getting arrested in the 7-11 parking lot in front of God and everybody and. And didn't Heath just want to scream himself hoarse inside his own head whenever he thought about that. Heath didn't understand how the system at the DMV worked and he didn't understand why any of this had to have happened to  _ him _ , but he did understand that there was just nothing he could do except try his best to deal with it.

They gave all of Heath’s stuff back to him when they turned him loose, his hat and his wallet and his phone and a bottle cap that he'd picked up off the floor and stuffed in his pocket after Thanksgiving supper so Waylon wouldn't eat it. His phone was dead and his wallet was still empty and the sharp edges of the bottle cap felt like nothing when they dug into the numb patch at the base of Heath’s thumb, even though he pressed it there hard as he stuffed it back in his pocket. 

Heath didn't know what to do. Didn't know what to do about a lot of things, but first and foremost was that he didn't know how he was going to get home when he couldn't call anyone. But Heath felt like he was going to crack if he had to be inside that building any longer so he went outside.

It wasn't even cold enough to see his breath when he walked out the sliding doors, but cold of the air still braced him after waiting around inside all day. The colors out on the horizon were already starting to get pretty, rich and raw with the start of the sunset even though Heath, despite his exhaustion, felt like his day should have just been getting started. It wasn't even that late. But the days were getting shorter and the weather would only get colder and it would be December in a matter of days and. 

Heath spotted Dean across the parking lot, sitting on the back bumper of Heath’s van and eating a gas station hamburger in enormous bites. Dean looked exactly like Dean always did. Like nothing had changed. It didn't take long for Dean to notice Heath, and Dean brightened and waved to him with the hand that wasn't holding the hamburger when he spotted Heath crossing the parking lot. 

“Did you drive here?” Was the first thing that Heath asked when he got close enough. It wasn't the best greeting that Heath could have gone with, but he was far too exhausted to deal with any of that and he couldn't help himself. 

“Yeah? I still had the keys after you got picked up, so.” Dean dug the jangling keys out of his coat pocket and held them out to Heath who snatched them right away.

“Dean.” Heath rubbed his hands across his face while he was still holding the keys, warm from Dean’s pocket and dragging teeth sharp against Heath’s cheek. He looked back and forth through his fingers at all the cop cars, black and whites lined up neatly in the parking lot. “You don't even have a driver's license and you drove  _ here _ ?”

“Well. Yeah. Your brothers couldn't get anyone to cover their shifts, and. I'm not working right now, so I volunteered.”

Heath didn't say anything else, just unlocked the van and slumped down behind the steering wheel. He plugged his phone in right away, had to jiggle the charger before it would connect, and the “0%” that popped up on the dark screen when it did was nothing more than a temporary grace against the mess of messages that Heath knew would be waiting for him.

“It's fucked up, man, what happened to you.” Dean said as he slid in on the passenger side if the van, “You alright?”

“Yeah.” It was clearly a lie, and Heath was relieved when Dean didn't push, just slammed the door since the latch on that side had been catching bad recently.

“So I've got a bunch of stuff I’m s’posed to tell you.” Dean started, and ticked off fingers as he went. “Your mom came over and stayed with the kids at your place for the weekend. She took the day off and kept the little ones home with her instead of taking them to Bo, but the older ones went to school like normal. I think they're all back at your place now.”

“Okay.”

“And I got the van fixed, which I figure you'd guessed since I drove it here.”

“Was it that belt thing?” Heath should have started the van instead of making them both sit there in the cold, but all of a sudden it seemed like the cold was the only thing keeping him awake against where the exhaustion had settled in bone deep.

“Don't worry about it.”

“Dean.”

“I said don’t worry about it.” Dean repeated, and Heath let it go. 

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem.” But Dean didn't seem all that relieved by Heath’s willingness to drop it. “They said on the news that there might be another big blizzard in a couple weeks.”

That got Heath’s attention, but not because he was worried about the snow. Well, he actually was worried about that, worried about whether or not the kids still fit in their boots, but. There had been something in Dean’s tone of voice that Heath recognized from raising seven children. Not from when they tried to lie, exactly, but from when something bad had happened and they didn't want to have to admit it.

“Dean. What happened?” Heath asked.

“Nothing yet, I mean, the storm might not even happen. They don't know for sure yet.”

“Dean, I'm too fu-” Heath stopped, took a deep shaky breath. Had to remind himself that Dean wouldn't have held it back from him if something bad had happened to one of the kids, but. “I'm too tired for this, please. Jus’ tell me what happened?”

Instead of answering him right away Dean pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket, flipped it open and punched a couple buttons before he handed it over to Heath. The picture that Dean had brought up was as grainy and out of focus as it could have been, but it didn't take much for Heath to recognize the kitchen counter of his trailer. Didn't take much for him to guess what the piece of paper lying it said - the word at the top of it started with an ‘E’ and it sure as hell didn't say ‘EXCELLENT JOB, HEATH.’

“It went up on your door on Sunday. The letter says you've got three days to pay what you owe or thirty days to get out. So the landlord didn't throw all your stuff out in the yard, at least.” Dean hesitated for a second, then asked “How far behind were you?”

When Heath told him, Dean let out a long low whistle and Heath bristled. It was only a couple of months worth of short payments, but when the numbers added together it seemed so much worse. Almost a thousand dollars, an impossible amount, more than Heath could have ever gotten together at one time.

“Shit, man. And he let you skate on that?”

“I was starting to pay it back!” Heath snapped, harsher than he had meant to. He knew that Dean was only trying to help, had to stop and take a deep breath before he could continue. “I've been trying to get caught up since I got the raise, but stuff just kept comin' up and then I got those tickets and now with this -”

Heath didn't trail off so much as he just shut himself down, sticking the keys in the ignition and listening with relief as the engine turned over. At least one thing was working right. But the thought didn't bring him much comfort as he stared out the windshield and saw nothing but the endless mess of his life.

“You all could stay at my place if you need.” Dean offered, and Heath must have made a face at that because Dean snorted. “Yeah, okay, I get it.”

They were quiet for a while then, until Dean asked, more subdued than Heath ever remembered him being before “What're you gonna do?”

“I don't know.” Heath said, and the honesty of it cut deeper than he would have thought, hurt in a way that Heath hadn't expected, so he said it again “I don't know, but I'll figure something out.”


	23. Simple Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Heath Slater - tailspin)

Heath didn't sleep again that night, even though he was back home with the kids cuddled up around him where they had insisted on having a camp out on the floor of the living room. But instead of being able to rest Heath just stared up at the water damage mark on the ceiling of the trailer, blurry in the dark. He rubbed at the nerve-damaged patch of his hand, trying to relax enough to close his eyes and failing miserably.

Heath's mom had gone home after supper, after they had done the dishes together while she got Heath caught up on everything he had missed. She had taken care of the laundry for him so that he would have one less thing to worry about, had used some of her own money to buy him some groceries and diapers and a box of GoodNites. Heath had been confused by the last one until his mom had explained that Boomer had started to wet the bed again. Every night since Friday, when one of the older kids in the trailer park had told Boomer that Heath was never coming back because he had been arrested for killing a cop and was going to get the death penalty.

Sure enough, Boomer had started to sniffle about it when all the kids had been getting ready for bed and Heath’d had to reassure him. One gentle hand rubbing the boy’s back as Heath had hugged him and told him it would all be okay. And it would. Of course it would. It had to be. But inside his own head Heath really hoped that this bedwetting wasn't going to be an ongoing thing. He would handle it if he had to, but. Heath really couldn't afford for it to be a thing right now

As Heath laid in the dark, he listened to the kids breathing and the weight of his responsibilities seemed even worse than normal, the never-ending list of little things that Heath had to keep track of. He needed to remember the exact amount of money in his bank account so that he didn't overdraft it, needed to keep track of the fact that the van only had a quarter tank of gas and that he was going to have to find new winter boots for the kids since boots never stayed good long enough to make it into family hand-me-down chain. Heath needed to remember that he needed new shoes too, and that he needed to call and cancel the dentist appointment that he had finally made for himself.

But counting all the little things that he needed to remember didn't do much to distract him from the bigger problems, like how hard it was going to be to find a place they could afford to live with seven kids and a prior eviction and his terrible credit. Or the voicemail from Kevin, telling Heath how worthless he was and that he had been fired from the Wal-Mart again.

Heath had pretty much figured on that last one. It had been easier to handle, anyways, than the voicemail from Rhyno where he had sounded so worried that Heath hadn't shown up to work on Saturday. Easier still than the second call from Rhyno, saying that Harlan had dropped by the Arby's to let Rhyno know why Heath wouldn't be coming in, didn't say much else beyond asking Heath to just call him back whenever he could.

Heath remembered how, when he had found out that he'd gotten the assistant manager job, the first thing he'd done had been hug Rhyno. Then he had flushed and apologized, since Rhyno hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it - standing stock still and not returning the gesture at all, staring off somewhere over Heath's shoulder. Then Heath, his face still hot, had promised that he wasn't going to let Rhyno down.

He could have just called Rhyno back, gotten it out if the way, but when Heath went to hit the call button the next morning he just couldn't. Couldn't do it. As long as he didn't call Rhyno then Heath didn't have to know whether or not he had lost both of his jobs, didn't have to know exactly how hard things were going to be for him now, all due to some stupid mistake. But Heath couldn't put it off forever, and when he walked through the front door of the Arby's the next morning Rhyno was right there waiting for him, quiet and concerned.

“It wasn't that bad, really.” Heath muttered, fiddling with a loose string on the sleeve of his jacket as he followed Rhyno back to the office. “I'm just happy that the kids weren't there when I was gettin’ picked up, y’know?”

“Is everything okay with that? Do you need to get a lawyer, or…?” Rhyno trailed off then, like he wasn't sure. Heath remembered then that of course Rhyno wouldn't know. Probably hadn't ever had to deal with this type of thing on a personal level since Rhyno was too smart to make the type of idiot mistake that had led Heath to getting the warrant put out on him in the first place.

“It wasn't that I did anything. It wasn't even my fault.” Heath's voice was tight, and he was embarrassed that it sounded exactly like something one his kids would say if he caught them making trouble. “There was a mix up at the DMV. It was just a mistake.”

“Well, uh. Accidents happen. You're still on the schedule for this week, but. If you need some time off to deal with things I understand.” Rhyno offered, so much nicer than the screaming voicemail from Kevin.

Heath shook his head “Nah, I can't really. I don't need any time off, but I, uh. I know I'm already full time and I've never been an assistant manager before so I dunno if I can pick up extra shifts? Maybe do some overtime? It would just be really really good if I could work some more for a while.”

Rhyno didn't answer right away, just looked at Heath carefully as he asked "Is, um. Is everything okay?”

Heath didn't know whether to say yes or no to that, was too tired to be able to tell which was right, so he just admitted the honest truth “I just dunno where we're gonna be livin’ for a while, is all. Me’n the kids I mean.”

“Did something happen?”

Heath really didn't want to have to admit that his family was being evicted to Rhyno, a guy who he liked and admired and who Heath had hoped before this might feel the same. But he couldn't lie about it either, couldn't do anything to make it better.

“No. I've just been 'bout nine hundred bucks behind on the rent and the lot fees and my landlord decided that he didn't want to wait for it anymore. But it's okay, really, I'll get something figured out.” Heath offered, not sure anymore if he was trying to reassure Rhyno or himself.

“We'd usually go stay with my mom for a bit, but. Well, Harlan’s first wife and her kids have been livin' in my mom’s spare room for a while and she ain't doin' so great, so I wouldn't want her to feel like she had to leave and. It would be a tight fit for all the kids and me in the living room but we could make it work. I guess Boomer and Cheyenne could stay with Hayden’s family for a while so it’d be less crowded, or we might just end up livin' out of the Budget Inn. Or we could stay with my Aunt Chrystal in the next town over, but she has all those cats so -”

Heath took a deep, shuddering breath as his hands flexed uselessly by his sides. He still couldn't feel his thumb, just the dead-asleep nerve buzzing. He had already stopped noticing it all the time but every time Heath thought about it he remembered having his arms wrenched back, the thick plastic cuffs biting down and.

“I could give you the money.” Rhyno said, breaking the silence before he quickly added “Not as a paycheck advance or anything, just. You wouldn't have to move and, um. You wouldn't have to worry about paying me back.”

Heath had never understood why some people were too proud to take help; he had known for a long time that he couldn't feed the kids his pride. Heath would have taken the money. He was in desperate enough straits that he would have taken it even though he didn't know whether Rhyno would get weird about it the way that people with money sometimes did, even though Heath would have tried to pay it back over time, except.

“It won't do no good.” Heath shook his head “I don't think he wants all of us livin' there anymore no matter what, not since I got arrested and there's all them rumors. And we're just month to month on the lease so even if I get it paid up now we’ll just get kicked out at the end of the month all the same...”

Heath laughed, then. Bright and jagged, too loud and tight and frantic as something cracked in his chest.

“I just don't know why I even try sometimes. All I do is work and raise kids and I still can't catch a break. You know I've gotta beg up at the Wal-Mart to get my job back each time they fire me? I've gotta beg to push carts around so I can make sure my kids’ve got shoes to wear but I still can't get ahead. I'm just one man. And I don't wanna just keep making beds in a burnin’ house, but I can't ever get out in front of it well enough to make any damn difference.”

“I just hate it! I hate it! I should just go up to the city and rob mailboxes and steal car stereos like Harlan use’ta. Maybe then I could have some spare cash. Maybe then I could get ahead for once. Except I can't, cause if I got caught at it then then my kids would get taken away and I can’t leave them all alone like that, I can't just ditch them like their mom did since she left and never looked back and don't seem to even give one single fuck about any of us.”

Heath realized that he had been getting louder and louder until he was basically yelling, but he couldn't help himself. Heath raged back and forth across the tiny office, kicked over the chair that he had sat in when Rhyno had first interviewed him, and shouted

“I'm tryin’ my god damn best! But it just isn't fuckin’ good enough!”

And the thing was, it had felt really, really good to shout like that. It felt great for Heath to just let all of his exhaustion and stress out for once, to let it go when he usually had to hold himself together so tightly around the kids. Except that once he was done with it Heath didn't feel so good any more. Instead, Heath was left just standing there, breathing hard, with his hands clenched into fists and his face surely as red as an apple while Rhyno, his boss, just sat there and looked at Heath. Silent.

Rhyno hadn’t said that he was going to fire Heath, but that had been back before Heath had started yelling his head off in Rhyno’s office, had threatened criminal activities and kicked over the chair.

“Sorry.” Heath said, mumbling so quietly that he could hardly even hear himself.

“Sorry.” Heath offered again, knowing that it wouldn't do any good.

He felt hollow and ashamed of himself. Regret tightened like a weight in his stomach and Heath couldn't see how pissed Rhyno was because he had turned his face down towards the scratched linoleum floor. He rubbed at his forehead as he took a long, shaky breath “I’ll, uh. I can go. I'll just leave my nametag and the keys for the door, I've just gotta get ‘em out of the van, but I won't …”

“Wait.” Rhyno said then, and Heath paused with his handle on the doorknob of Rhyno's office. Heath had been expecting Rhyno to maybe tell him not to bother coming by to pick up that last paycheck, so Heath was caught off guard to say the least when Rhyno said “Please, don't quit. And you, uh, might have to apologize to the customers if any of them heard you, but. I just wanted to say that if you needed a place to stay, I mean, you could. Well, you all could stay with me for a while.”

Heath’s head snapped up and Rhyno almost seemed to flinch, suddenly too busy with shuffling the papers on his desk to look at Heath.

“I’m sorry, I. I shouldn't have offered. That was inappropriate.”

“Yeah.” Heath said. Rhyno nodded, looking stricken, before Heath realized that he needed to clarify.

“I mean, not ‘yeah’ like it was outta line -” and honestly even if it was, Heath didn't care, could feel himself smiling “- but ‘yeah’ that. If you don't mind, we could stay with you for a bit,."

"Really?"

"Yeah, long as you're sure it wouldn' be too much trouble. It'll just be ‘til I can get some money saved up, I promise.”


	24. Crown on the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Neville - black ice)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week's update schedule might be a little off too, not sure if I'll be back by Monday or not

The day had been short and gloomy, slate grey skies and howling wind that had nearly whipped the door out of Neville’s hands the one time he had tried to go outside. The weather forecast had been calling for weeks of bone cracking cold, and so far it seemed like they had hit the nail right on the head. It meant that Neville had been stuck inside for a little too long, but. Oh well. It wasn't like he was missing anything other than getting blasted by the blowing snow. 

Neville had been home on winter break for a week and a half but he had already gotten to the stage where he relished the fact that he didn't have anything important to do. The holidays were over. He had mostly been passing the time by sleeping until noon in his room that still had all the same posters in the walls, laying on the couch in his parent's basement and watching Deadwood, snapchatting with his friends from college who had gone home to more interesting places, and ignoring all of the texts from Dolph.

How had Dolph even known Neville was back in town? Neville sure as hell hadn't said anything to him. But for days now it had been nothing but  _ ‘lol whats up’ _ and  _ ‘u wanna hang out l8r?’. _

Neville had put his text alerts on silent. 

But after he had eaten with his parents that night Neville looked at the remote and looked at his Facebook and decided what the hell. He just wanted to know if maybe, maybe his memories of his senior year of high school weren't a little bit faulty. It couldn't have been that bad. Except that when the time came Neville realized, well before he had even gotten Dolph's car, that he had in fact been wrong. 

It wasn't as bad as he had remembered. It was, quite possibly, even worse.

The car idling at the curb in front of his parents’ house was a little different than Neville remembered. When he had been in high school the thing had been a couple shades of blue from the different body kits that Dolph had put on it, but now it was painted entirely black. Still unmistakably Dolph’s car, though. Neville had been able to hear the shitty music that Dolph was blasting from five feet away even with the doors shut and the wind howling outside, low bass shivering out of the blownout sound system, and it didn't get any better once he opened the door 

“Whoa, Nev, nice beard.” Dolph had his voice raised more in order to be heard over the wind and the music as Neville dropped into the seat. “You like the whip? I got her all murdered out since the last time you saw her.”

Then the smell of booze hit Neville almost as soon as he slammed the door of Dolph's car shut, aided by another gust of wind. Neville had his hand back on the handle immediately, ready to get out and walk back up the driveway of his house and forget that he had ever thought that this was a good idea. Unfortunately, Dolph had already shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb.

“I'm not riding with you if you're fucked up.”

“That's my boy! Daring to resist drunk driving!” Dolph grinned and reached over like he was going to try and ruffle Neville’s hair, like Neville was some little kid.

Neville smacked Dolph's hand away, scowling. “I'm fuckin’ serious Dolph.”

“Hey, man, chill out. I'm sober as a judge. You know we'd never start the party without you!”

“Really.” Neville looked out the window for a second at the dark streets, trying and failing to figure out where Dolph was going. “Because it smells like a fuckin’ Bud Light Lime factory exploded in here.”

“Kinda.” Dolph just shrugged, head tilted to the side and grinning at Neville like he wasn't also doing at least fifty in a residential neighborhood.

“Wait, what?”

“I forgot a sixer in the back the other day? And it’s been super cold, ya know, so they froze and busted open everywhere.”

Neville shifted and tucked his leg under his body so that he could kind of sit up and twist around. 

He had just wanted to see, exactly, how many blown out beer cans Dolph had rolling around back there; he hadn't been expecting to come face to face with some random dude.  Neville hadn't had any idea that there was even another person in the car. The guy in the back wasn't familiar at all to Neville, wearing a leather jacket over - was that a denim shirt? Christ. He had a knit cap pulled down over the tops of his ears, knees bent up in the tiny space behind Dolph's reclined chair as he stared back at Neville, silent, looking like an axe murderer that Dolph had just picked up from the side of the road.

“Barry’s a college boy too.” Dolph said out of nowhere, still having to shout to be heard over the music he had pumping out of the speakers.

“What?” Neville turned part ways back around, watched as Dolph watched him instead of the road. 

“Barry.” Dolph said again, as Neville reached out and jabbed the power button on the radio. 

Neville's ears rang from the sudden absence of noise but it wasn't long before he could hear again - the wind gusting against the car, the drumming of Dolph’s hands on the steering wheel.

“It's Baron.” Said the guy in the backseat.

“Who's a Baron?” Neville asked, confused.

“It's my name.”

“It's his name.” Dolph said at the same time, twitching his head to gesture towards the back. “Barry’s cool as fuck. He has a motorcycle and he’s, like. A psychologist or something.”

Neville raised an eyebrow. Just from looking at the guy, Neville sincerely doubted that Barry - Baron, whatever the fuck - was either a psychologist or cool. Sure enough, Baron cleared his throat and clarified after a few awkward seconds.

“That's not - I have a bachelor’s in sociology.”

“Really?” Neville’s lip curled. Sure he was only a semester in and still undeclared, but he still reserved the right to pass judgement.

“Yeah.” Baron said, looking at Neville now instead of just glaring at the back of Dolph's headrest. For a minute Baron seemed slightly less like he wanted to murder everyone in the car, or at least he did until Neville said

“Sociology, huh? So you just partied all the time?”

“... actually I went to online college.”

“Yeah? And what are you doing with  _ that  _ degree?” Neville didn't really give a shit about the answer, but he was still kind of curious. When he picked a major he was definitely going to pick something useful and not, you know. Sociology.

“Actually, Barry sells sex toys.” Dolph laughed, delighted, clearly not picking up on the growing tension in the car. “Isn't that the coolest fuckin' job you've ever heard of?”

“No.”

“Get it?” Dolph said, leaning over the center console to elbow Neville in the side “Fucking job. Because of the sex toys.”

Baron turned to glower out the window, and Neville sneered at the back of his head before turning around in his seat, shoving Dolph’s elbow away. It wasn't really a surprise that Dolph hung out with all the worst people. 

Once he was sitting back down Neville could see that Dolph had left the neighborhood behind, headed out on a flat county highway. The blowing snow flew past Dolph’s windshield and the ditches on either side of the road looked black, bottomless, the snow packed fields beyond the road disappearing into the dark night. There was no other traffic around, which meant that Neville could see, with near perfect clarity,  the rapidly approaching patch where the pavement looked shiny and slick in Dolph's headlights. 

“Oh no, no.” Neville shook his head as he caught the gleam Dolph’s eye. In Neville’s peripheral vision he saw Baron sit up and look around, confused, as Neville said “Don't you fucking dare.”

“Hold on tight, nerds!” Dolph crowed as he gunned the engine toward the patch of black ice, and Neville had just enough time to grab the armrests and grit his teeth before the car was frictionless and free.

Slammed up against the door by the momentum, Neville couldn't hope to even try and keep track of how many circles they spun in. Not that he would have even tried. If Neville had been able to think he probably would have been swearing to kill Dolph, but as it was he could only bite his tongue, tasting blood, wordless and terrified. He couldn't breathe waiting for the crunch of metal, waiting for the car to hit something, to tear all three of them apart, and then -

Then the tires squealed, a long drawn out scream of rubber, and the car stopped. 

With the adrenaline still coursing through his veins, Neville blinked to see that they were still sitting with all four wheels safe on the pavement on the right side of the road even though they probably should have been flipped upside-down in the ditch. Dolph was looking over at Neville with the single most shit-eating expression that Neville had ever seen on the face of another human being. A pale green pickup truck rumbled by in the other lane, tapped the horn at them, and Neville felt whatever spell was keeping him frozen shatter.

He started shaking all over, legs twitching with the leftover adrenaline, both of his hands trembling until he curled one into a fist and socked Dolph in the arm as hard as he could. Dolph just grinned back at him like it was all a joke, like he wasn't even aware that he could have gotten them all killed and. And that made it so much worse. Neville had known from the start that it was a mistake to get in the car with Dolph, but he had not known how big of a mistake it could have been, the possible magnitude of his poor choice.  Breathing hard, Neville figured that he had probably sold his soul in his moment of terror so that he could live to murder Dolph Ziggler, and he intended to get the most for his end of that bargain. 

Before Neville could say anything, the back door of the car flew open and Baron staggered out. Dolph and Neville turned in unison to watch as Baron went down on his knees in the middle of the road. Baron hadn't closed the door behind him, and the inside of Dolph’s car was instantly frigid as all the heat was sucked away. The little dome light that had come on wasn't particularly bright, but the low illumination throughb the open door was enough for Neville to see that Baron was shaking, puking his guts out on the icy asphalt as the wind pulled his jacket sideways and drove the blowing snow all around him.

“Hell yeah, Barry!” Dolph shouted out into the night “Puke and rally!”


	25. Sure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Blake and Murphy - anvil)

Blake had parked up front at the 7-11 while Murphy had gone inside to get some food after he'd finished gassing up the car. Murphy didn't have to be at work for a while yet, and they'd wanted to stop and watch the big storm cloud for a bit.

“That car was back at the garage today.” Blake said, after a while.

“The one with the little shrine in the airbag compartment?” Murphy shifted a little where he was leaned against the car next to Blake, reached back to grab his pop where it had been sitting on the trunk.

“Nah, not that one.” Blake shook his head. “The ghost bear car.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I changed the oil on it. Got pictures this time, here -” Blake fished his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Murphy. “Think fast.”

Murphy’d been standing there with half of a hot dog in one hand and his drink in the other. He stared at Blake flatly as the phone bounced off his shoulder and fell face down on the pavement.

“Really?”

Blake shrugged. “It ain't gonna get any more broke than it already was.”

Murphy sighed and set his pop down on the hood next to the other hot dog that he hadn't started eating yet. He bent over and picked up Blake's phone, fingers skipping over the broken screen as he unlocked it and scrolled through Blake's album while Blake watched over his shoulder.

Blake had taken a few pictures of the car while the oil had been draining. The outside of it was nothing special except for the huge half moons of rust that had eaten up from the bumper in the back, but the inside was a little bit strange. There were Winnie the Pooh stickers all over the interior of the car, almost every hard surface was decorated. The ones on the door panels and in the footwells were still bright enough that Blake had been able to tell that none of the other animals were on the stickers. Just Pooh.

Pooh, chasing a butterfly. Pooh, with his head stuck in a jar of honey. As the stickers crept up to the dashboard they were more and more washed out. Faded to blurry ghosts by the constant sun.

“These are Winnie the Pooh stickers.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you'd said there were ghost bears?”

“Yeah. They are. See how they're all washed out? Ghost bears.”

“Oh. Huh.” Murphy handed Blake's phone back over to him.

They just stood there for a while, easy silence between them as they watched the sky. There had been other people around before but now the parking lot was empty except for them. It would fully take a couple more hours before it got fully dark but the evening was already calm and quiet. There wasn't even enough of a breeze to even rustle the grass but the air was thick with ozone.

A few minutes later a familiar pickup truck pulled up to the curb. Blake could always hear Daniel coming and going, the ladder strapped to the frame and a couple mounted toolboxes rattling in the bed. Blake and Murphy had worked on Daniel’s road construction crew with them the summer after they had aged out of the system. They'd been crashing with Alexa after the foster home had kicked them out, sleeping in Alexa’s mom’s living room and trading off each night on who got the couch and who got the floor by the box fan.

Blake and Murphy waved to Daniel as he drove away after Dean had hopped out of the passenger side. Dean slung his toolbelt over his shoulder as he crossed the parking lot towards Blake and Murphy. “S’up with you two?”

“Not much.”

“What's up with you?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot.” Dean leaned up against the side of the car right next to Murphy, crossed his arms over his chest as he tilted his head back to stare up at the sky. “You see that cloud? Coolest fuckin’ thing.”

“Yeah.” Murphy said. Blake wanted to ask Dean why else they would be standing in a parking lot and staring up at the sky, but he didn't. 

“So.” Dean said after a while. “You two goin’ to the bonfire tonight?”

Murphy had checked the time and was busy eating again, so Blake answered for him.

“Murphy's gotta work.”

“But you're going?”

“Yeah. Me’n Alexa. Murphy's droppin’ me off so I can drive over with her once she gets done at the Arby's.” Blake turned to look at Dean, who shoved his hands in his pockets, looking resigned.

“Oh. Yeah, alright.”

“What about you?”

“Yeah, I'm going. Tryin’ to find a ride though. Dolph offered to drive me out there but, you know.” Dean shrugged, loose and lazy in the twilight. “I’d rather gouge my fuckin’ eyes out.”

Blake and Murphy nodded.

It was getting a little cool as the sun set, and the air was so charged with ozone that Blake almost expected his hair to stand on end. Blake couldn't tell how far away the thunderstorm was over the flat, flat fields. Right along the horizon the thick clouds and falling rain were a deep purple that lightened up into shades of pink along the rolling, puffy upper part of the cloud. That part would have been pretty enough on its own, but what was really eye-catching about it was the top part of the cloud that reached up and up and up. 

It sorta reminded Blake of the fuzzy fine-grained dust that always got kicked up behind cars on gravel roads. Except this plume must have been miles and miles high, towering over everything, sort of feathery around the edges. It spread out and flattened along the top, peach and yellow and gold laced edges. Startling and bright against the darkened evening sky. Blake had hardly been able to take his eyes off of it, and when they had driven from the apartment to the gas station he had noticed people in the other cars looking at the cloud too, taking pictures on their phones 

Blake turned to Murphy, nudged him with his shoulder. “It's an anvil cloud, right?”

“Yep.”

“Wait.” Dean looked over, eyebrow raised “How the fuck d’you know that?”

“I know stuff.”

“Murphy knows stuff.” 

Dean hummed, like he wasn't quite convinced. Even though Murphy had definitely just proved that he knew stuff. 

“Didn't we get rained out the last time Big E tried to do this?” Blake asked, remembering the last time that Nia had come to visit.

“It's not supposed to hit us.” someone said from behind Blake, and all three of them turned at once to see JJ standing in the doorway of the gas station. “I just texted E and he says we're still good to go, it's gonna miss us to the south.”

“We're good to go?” Dean repeated “Great, so you're gonna give me a ride. What time are we headin’ out there?”

“No.” Was all JJ said in response.

“Are you sure?” Dean drug out the ‘sure’, long and slow. “Because Chad said I could ride out there with you guys.”

“Did he?” JJ crossed his arms over his chest and stared back, expression flat.

“Nope.” Dean shrugged, grinned. “But he's gonna say so once I call him.”


	26. Iron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Lana - smize)

Alexander was sprawled out on the couch when Lana got home from the grocery store. There was a mostly empty pint of ice cream perched on his bare chest, only the melted dregs left at the bottom, and the metal spoon overbalanced the whole thing to the side like it was only one too-deep breath away from toppling over onto the floor. Lana didn't even have to say anything as she walked past him, had seen the guilty look on his face as soon as she had opened the door and caught him rewatching old episodes of America's Next Top Model with the sink still full of dishes.

“Lana…”

She turned away from him, set the gallon of milk down on the counter and slung her purse over the back of the barstool. The plastic handles of the grocery bags were digging into her forearms as she hefted them up into the stove top. Lana could have just left them in the car and made Alexander get them, but. She had seen him going for the ice cream before she had even been fully out the door, had known that this was coming, and it would be better this way.

This way, Lana got to guilt Alexander  _ and _ she got the satisfaction of having carried all the bags in one load by herself.

“Lana…” He came around the counter, reaching out as if he was going to help but Lana easily blocked him, stepped in between him and the bags so that he was facing the back of her head when she said

“No, no Alexander. You lay back down and go back to your models, since they are obviously more important than me.”

“Lana! You know it isn't like that. They are learning to  _ smize _ and-”

They didn't usually speak English at home, especially not when they ‘fought’ like this. But smize tended to slip in. There wasn't really another word better than smize. Lana had to stop the smile that threatened to twitch at her lips. Instead, she spun around to face her husband, throwing her hands up as if it were the end of the world, shouting 

“Yes, they are learning to smize and I am at the store buying your food while you lay about like a lazy cat, too good to even do the dishes.”

“I worked all day.” He whined, pleading “I was tired! I thought you would be gone longer than -”

“I know you worked all day! We work at the same plant, it's the place that I worked all day too!”

“Lana -”

Things only devolved and got louder from there. By the time Lana was satisfied, Alexander had promised to not only do the dishes and put the food away, but to fix supper as well. She was fairly sure he had been planning to do that anyway since he was by far the better cook - of all the things they liked to argue about, that one wasn't really up for debate. Lana sighed as she looked at Alexander, already putting the dishwashing gloves on as he shuffled his feet like a guilty child and glanced up at her from under his long hair.

“Fine.” Lana crossed her arms over her chest, looking down her nose at him. It was quite a feat on her part given their height difference but she’d had plenty of practice. “Now I am going to be the one watching the models.”

“Tell me when they smize!” He called out over the running water as Lana sunk down in the couch.

She had only unpaused the TV for a second before she paused it again, picked the empty ice cream carton up off the floor with two fingers and stalked back into the kitchen to chuck it in the trashcan, her lip curled as she yelled back “No! You eat all the ice cream, leave garbage on our floor - you don't deserve to see them smize.”

The cool night breeze drifted in through the screens as they sat together at the counter to eat - Lana always let Alexsander have the seat closest to the window so that he could stay cool. Well, cooler. They had all the windows in the apartment open since the little wall mounted air conditioning unit was broken again and he always ran so hot. He was a big, sweaty man. But he was her big sweaty man.

It would be winter soon enough - although they agreed that the puny American winter hardly even qualified for the season. But not yet. Lana felt like she could smell the shifting seasons in the air, and it made her want to change other things too.

“You need a haircut.” Lana said in between bites, reaching over to wrap the loose ends of his long hair around her fingers. She tugged gently, just enough so Alexander would feel the pull of it on his scalp. She knew that he liked it, and sure enough he just hummed under his breath, still chewing, didn't try to resist when she did it again. “Look at you,  _ tch _ . What have you done with my handsome man? I can hardly look at you without weeping.”

When all the food was gone, Lana poked him in the ribs and shouted down his complaints as she bullied him into the bathroom and made him sit on the edge of the tub. Alexander hunched over with his forearms braced on his knees, hands hanging loose between his legs while Lana grabbed the clippers out of the back of the closet and had to dig through the vanity drawers to try and find her scissors. They hadn't used them in so long that they were buried under the box of q-tips and all of Alexander's half-empty cans of Axe body spray.

Lana felt centered as she clipped away Alexander's long hair, watched as it caught on his sweaty skin before she brushed it off his shoulders and down into the tub. There was something soothing about it, combing out the hair and measuring it with her fingers, pulling it taught before the snip-ship-snip of the scissors cut it loose, deciding on the right guard to use before she flipped the dial and the clippers buzzed to life in her hand.

When Lana had been growing up her mother had always cut her and her brother's hair, and once Lana had gotten a little older she had taught Lana how to do it too. How to do it right. None of the uneven, awkward bowl cuts that some other kids got stuck with. 

Still, it was never something that Lana had thought to try and make a living at. For her, cutting hair had always been a private, intimate thing - there was pride in taking someone that she loved and making sure that they looked good. Being able to send them out into the world from their home, the tiny rooms that were loud and full of love, and knowing that if he looked presentable that it was only by her hand.

Later, they re-watched the episode of ANTM that Lana had missed during her trip to the store, arguing about who had the better poses. Alexander stretched out with his head on her lap, and after a while Lana took her arm off the back of the couch to reach down scratch her fingernails through his sideburns, through the soft, newly shorn sides of his scalp. 

“Who is my handsome man?” Lana asked as she smized down at him, and Alexander looked back up at her, his face open and delighted as she ruffled the short hairs.


	27. Evergreen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns - tradition)

Dean had taken a little longer than normal that morning looking at the wide array of candy bar options at the gas station as Daniel waited for him out by the curb. Daniel always complained a blue streak if he had to leave the truck running for one nanosecond longer than anticipated when he picked Dean up. He would go on and on about how he didn't want to contribute any more to climate change, to the carbon emissions and the holes in the ozone layer. Dean had suggested more than once that he just get a damn Prius but apparently that was a no go since Daniel actually needed the truck to, you know, haul around all his tools and degenerate coworkers.

One of these days Daniel was gonna get sick of Dean and just leave him behind, but until then - Dean looked down as Chad slid a little piece of paper across the counter towards him.

“This is for you.”

“Nah, I don't need a -. Wait, I haven't even paid yet have I?”

Chad had rolled his eyes, flipped the receipt over so Dean could see what was scrawled on the back. “Guy came in the other day, asked me to give this to you.”

Dean blinked down at what was scribbled on the receipt scrap. He honestly wasn't sure what it was that his heart did, then. Couldn't tell if it started beating faster or stopped beating altogether or maybe some combination of the two as he stuffed the scrap of receipt with Roman’s phone number on it into his pocket and hustled out to hop in Daniel’s truck. 

The receipt had burned there like a red coal in Dean's consciousness all day as he had stapled up bats of fuzzy fiberglass insulation. At least it gave Dean something to think about other than how much he hated working with insulation. It was a pain in the ass, and everyone looked at him like he was going through withdrawls for days afterwards as he scratched at his arms, but they had too much to do and not enough guys on the crew so Dean got stuck with it. For some reason, Daniel trusted him with the pneumatic staple gun. It meant that Dean hadn't fucked anything up recently, and it would have started up that tickling itch in the back of his brain except for the fact that he was already too preoccupied with other thoughts.

Dean didn't have as much time to slack off as he usually would have liked, but. On that day it was a good thing. If his hands wouldn't have been so busy he probably would have fiddled with the receipt until he had worn the paper thin and smeared the ink beyond recognition. 

As it was, though, Dean made it home to his quiet trailer that night with Roman’s phone number still intact. 

He didn't wait to call. He didn't really know what to expect since he hadn't talked to Roman in more than… Christ, five years?  There was no telling how long Roman was back in town for, how long it would be until he left or if he would ever have a reason to ever look for Dean again. People came and went, Dean knew. Going on with their own lives. Just because Dean didn't ever seem to go anywhere didn't mean that the world stopped turning.

So Dean hadn't known what to expect when he had called Roman. Maybe they'd meet at the bar and get a couple drinks while they caught up or something like that. What Dean certainly hadn't expected was that he would be meeting Roman the next night at the high school parking lot a couple of hours after sundown the next night.

“I figured now was as good a time as any, brother. Yknow, since we never got to do it back in the day.” Roman had said, smiling down at him after they had finally let go of the long, crushing hug. Roman had a backpack on his shoulders that made a not-unfamiliar rattling noise each time it shifted, and Dean had grinned from ear to ear.

“Aren't you supposed to be all responsible and shit now?” Dean asked, scratching at his neck where the stray shards of fiberglass were still tormenting him. “What happens if you get caught?”

Roman shrugged the backpack up a little higher, zipped the straps tight. “What was it you always used to tell me back in the day? About getting caught?”

“Just don't do it.”

“Yep.”

The evening air was cool and a little damp, unusually still since the spring winds had settled down for once. It had rained earlier, maybe that was it. There were wide shallow puddles all across the asphalt of the parking lot that caught the reflections if the streetlights and the black, cut out shadows that Dean and Roman threw behind them as they walked over to state up at the school building.

The lower rungs of the ladder up to the big brick chimney had been cut off at some point after Dean's school days. Probably to try and prevent this very thing. Dean could see the bottom one easily enough in the glow from the streetlamps. It was probably ten feet up off the ground - easy enough to get to if someone had an extension ladder to lean up against the brick wall, but too high to be able to jump up to. Roman was standing next to Dean with his head tilted back as he regarded the ladder. Dean figured that Roman was probably in better shape than him, but there was no way that either of them was climbing ten feet straight up a brick wall without something to grab -

“I could probably boost you up to it.” Roman offered “How's your upper body strength?”

Dean shook his head. He might be able to pull himself up, but then how would Roman get up there? No. There had to be a dumpster or something that they could roll over to stand on. Worst case scenario the mission would be delayed while Dean snuck over to a couple of blocks to steal Daniel’s ladder out of the back of his truck, but there had to be another way. 

“What about that?” Dean said

“The lightning rod cable?” Roman reached out. There was enough give in it for him to get his fingers underneath the braided cable and curl his hand around it in a fist to tug and test it. “You think it's strong enough to hold?”

“Yeah, it's gotta be.” Dean caught the look Roman gave him and grinned “Only one way to find out, right?”

Dean didn't think it looked like Roman had too much trouble getting up the cable to the ladder, even if he was cursing under his breath as the cans rattled around and made a racket. Here this was supposed to be some covert mission, real black ops shit, and Roman hadn't even tried to pad the cans of spray paint. Amateur. Dean told him so, and Roman leaned over and flipped him off before taking up off the ladder.

Really, neither of them were being particularly quiet. But it didn't really matter. There was no one around to hear them, and it was doubtful anyone would have even cared. The parking lot remained empty, lit by the humming lights around the edges and the sliver of moon that poked through the clouds, as Dean climbed the cable and onto the ladder, followed Roman up to the chimney.

It was weird. Dean had never thought about doing this since he had been locked up. He’d had more important things to worry about than missing out on some dumb high school senior tradition. Yet Dean still felt like he was making some long awaited pilgrimage even though he couldn't have quite explain why. He climbed the ladder, hand over hand, smooth metal that dug into the palms of his rough hands as he took deep breaths of the cool spring air. When Dean finally got to the top Roman reached down and grabbed his hand and helped pull him up onto the roof.


	28. Doused

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Sami Zayn - flat tire)

Sami realized, in retrospect, that he should have just pulled back into a parking space when he had realized he had a flat tire. 

The thought had crossed his mind at the time, but. It was just that shift change at the plant was always busy and Sami would have felt terrible about taking a spot from someone. So he had grit his teeth while the chiming of the low tire pressure alert had rung at him incessantly, pulled off onto the gravel shoulder on the edge of the parking lot to wait for the rain to stop.

The downpour really wasn't ideal, but it gave Sami time to get his waterproof raincoat on and to review all the steps for changing a tire in the owner's manual. At least he didn't need to worry about the spare tire not having enough air in it - Sami's checked the pressure on all his tires, including the spare, by hand once a month. The rain didn't let up until after he had checked the schematic for where the jack was supposed to brace against the frame and to Googled the best way to get lug nuts loosened, and by then Sami figured that he was as ready as he was ever going to get. 

Sami had pretty well convinced himself that he was going to be able to handle changing the tire. Which made it even worse when he failed miserably.

It wasn't even his fault, was the worst thing. Except maybe it was - one of the first points in all safety meetings was that every accident was preventable. Sami should have thought about the fact that the ground might be soft from the rain. Should have moved his car back onto the pavement before before he had pulled off the flat tire. Should have, should have, should have. Should have done anything before the gravel had shifted and the jack had sunk down, trapped in the sodden clay under his car. 

Just like that. It wasn't dramatic, didn't even make a sound except for the slick squelching of the mud, and then there was nothing that Sami could do.

Sami wasn't sure how long he had stayed there, crouched down with his head tilted forward against the side panel. Long enough that it had started to drizzle again, little drops of rain that pattered all around him, ran along the edge of the hood of Sami’s raincoat before they got too heavy and dropped off onto his clenched hands.

The sound of his own breathing was louder in his ears than anything else as Sami tried to figure out what to do. Well, that wasn’t exactly right. Sami knew what he could do. He knew that he could make the long walk across the entire parking lot and go back inside the plant’s main office. He could explain the situation, ask to borrow someone's jack so that he could get his own unstuck and finish changing this tire. Samu could go and ask someone to help him, sure, but.

Sami wasn’t sure that his pride could take it.

Not that there was really a choice at all. Sami had gotten himself into this mess and there was no way for him to fix it on his own. Not that he could think of, anyways. Then it didn’t matter because he heard the rumbling of an engine crawling closer, shutting off, the angry squealing of bad shocks and the slamming of a door. 

Sami was not sure who, exactly, he had been expecting. But seeing Braun looming in the rain when he looked up was not actually the worst possible option that Sami had imagined. That would have been Chris Jericho, who would have crowed about it in the breakroom for months. Never would have shut up about how he’d had to swoop in and save the day by helping poor, useless Sami Zayn change a tire...

“How fast can you get it?” Braun asked by way of greeting as he lumbered over to stand besides Sami.

Sami blinked up at Braun. “Get what?”

Even without the inclement weather, Sami didn't think the Spring weather wasn’t really warm enough to get away with wearing a tank top. But Braun didn’t seem bothered, tying his long hair back slowly and methodically even as he was soaked by the rain. Sami had only ever seen the guy in work coveralls before, tried not to stare too hard at the stark religious tattoos on Braun's wide arms while Braun asked

“The spare. How fast can you get it on?”

“I don't know.” Sami admitted, looking at where he had leaned it up against the back bumper of the car. It had been heavier than Sami had expected when he had wrestled it out of the trunk. “I haven't done this in years.”

Sami had stuck his hands in his pockets as he spoke, tried to keep calm and not grind his teeth. He thought, maybe, that Braun would make fun. Except Braun didn't really talk a lot. So maybe Braun would sneer, or give Sami a look, like. Like Sami may have been smart, but he sure wasn't good for much in the real world. It was something that Sami had seen plenty of times before from the other guys at work. 

Instead of doing any of that, Braun just rolled his enormous shoulders like he was warming up for something as he walked over to the bumper of Sami’s car. Braun huffed as he rolled the spare out of  the way, over to Sami, crouched down to look underneath the car. Water dripped from Braun’s beard and Sami watched the way that his small, dark eyes tracked back and forth as he examined the predicament that Sami had gotten himself into.

“Yeah, I didn’t think that the ground would be so soft. Can you see the jack under there?” Sami put his hand out on the wet treads to steady the spare tire against the side of his leg as he rambled on. "I can’t get it out on my own, but if I could just borrow yours I could -”

“No.” Braun said, shook his head as he stood back up to his full height, shifted his feet against the soft gravel and loomed over Sami’s little car.

Sami was overtaken by a blazing moment of fury. What the hell. Why had Braun even bothered to stop, then? Why would he pretend like he was going to help only to refuse and rip it away at the last second? What type of person would even do that? 

Braun was not known to be a particularly friendly guy, but Sami hadn’t ever had any problems with him before. Sami hadn’t been afraid to talk to Braun the way that it seemed everyone else was, even if Braun seemed a little confused each time Sami greeted him in passing. Other people were too. Like they couldn’t believe that Sami would willingly put himself in Braun’s line of sight. So yeah, maybe Braun would kick his ass one handed right here on the edge of the parking lot but Sami wasn’t just about to let him -

“Get ready.” Braun said.

Sami stopped short, not sure what Braun was talking about even though Sami knew that he was definitely ready to give Braun a piece of his mind. That was for sure. But before Sami could say anything Braun crouched back down reached both hands under the back of the car. Sami wasn’t sure what exactly Braun was doing until he saw Braun’s entire body go tense and solid. Sami realized what was happening, then, even if he couldn't quite believe it when Braun grunted and  _ lifted _ the back corner of Sami’s car up out of the mud.


	29. Walk the Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Rhyno - ice skating)

Rhyno barely got out of the way in time when the kids took off running, clambering over each other almost as soon as Heath parked the van and gotten everyone’s seatbelts unbuckled. The pack of them headed directly towards the clusters of people at the other edge of the full parking lot, and even though Boomer hung back a little bit at first, holding hands with both Ricky and Gunner, it wasn't long until he too disappeared between the cars and off in the direction of the skating rink. 

It was a beautiful day, calm and nearly windless, and despite the formidable steel grey sky it was just barely cold enough for the tiny snowflakes that were drifting down around them. 

“You don't gotta wait for me.” Heath said as he leaned over to dig around the back of the van. "You can go on ahead."

The kids had been too excited to grab most of their stuff, and Rhyno watched as Heath shoved a bunch of small hats and gloves into a plastic shopping bag. He wished that there was something he could do to help, but if he tried to reach in and grab anything then he would be shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, with Heath and Rhyno knew better than to think that was okay. So instead he just stood there, dumb and useless, until he finally managed to say

“Uh. How am I going to find your family?” 

“Huh?” Heath straightened up and looked over, catching the little flakes of snow on his eyelashes, and Rhyno cut his gaze down and away.

Rhyno knew that he was being weird and that needed to stop. Heath hadn't even been looking at him. Heath had just been looking at Waylon. The baby - hardly a baby any more, he was getting so  _ big _ \- had fussed the entire drive but had fallen asleep the moment that Heath had gotten him out of the car seat and handed him to Rhyno. 

Rhyno shifted, uncomfortable, worried that maybe he was holding Waylon the wrong way. Maybe that was why Heath was looking at him like that. “I just meant, uh. With all these people here. I'm not sure where to look for the rest of your family.”

“Oh. Pretty sure they're all related somehow.” Heath smiled and waved his hand in a vague encompassing gesture. “Just lemme get Cheyenne’s hat and the diaper bag ‘fore I show you around.”

A few towns over, the outdoor skating rink wasn't a place that Rhyno had ever been before. Heath had explained during the drive the most of the year it was just a flat level area where kids could run around. In the winter it was only a skating rink by default, a low lying field spot that filled and froze, with crusty snowbanks along the edges of it instead of proper boards.

“It's nothin’ special.” Heath had said, looking straight out the windshield. “We just don't gotta pay to skate there, so it works good enough.”

Once Rhyno saw it for himself, though, he had to disagree. It  _ was _ special. With the last tiny bits of snow drifting through the air, and with the way that the low winter sun colored the piles of snow and the scarred ice in different tones of have blue, with Heath leading Rhyno along and pointing things out to him. It seemed like the type of thing that Rhyno never should have intruded upon. But Rhyno figured that could pretend he belong, just. Just for a little while.

There were a bunch of thermoses full of hot chocolate and leaning pillars of styrofoam cups set up on the hood of a station wagon next to an old Minnie Winnie motorhome idling at the edge of the rink - Heath explained that the Winnie belonged to his Uncle Speedy and was meant to be a place for people to go warm up when they got cold, which explained the steady stream of kids running in and out of the door. And then there were all the Slaters, the happy crowd of adults catching up with one another while the kids scurried around between the forest of legs and Rhyno tried not to let his discomfort show.

Because at some point Waylon was handed over to a cooing relative and Heath had to go off to settle a dispute between his two sets of twins, and Rhyno was left alone. Which was fine. There was nothing to be afraid of. Rhyno could handle himself.

Rhyno was as grateful as ever for his lifetime of training in dealing with people when he felt uncomfortable. So, just. Dealing with people in general. How to shake hands and make the appropriate amount of eye contact while making polite small talk and all the tricks for remembering people's names that he had learned back in college. It wasn't like Rhyno hadn’t known that Heath had a large family. But it was something else entirely to meet so many of them in one place, putting faces to names that he had heard Heath mention before.

No one was anything other than friendly, but Rhyno only felt worse about himself each time one of Heath’s cousins asked how long the two of them had known each other. When Rhyno finally excused himself to try and go skating, though, he only felt worse. He didn't belong here at Heath’s happy family gathering, and he shouldn't have been trying to fool all of Heath’s relatives into thinking that Rhyno was a good person.

Rhyno had tried not to think about too hard about how Heath had invited Rhyno to come along to the skating party, knowing that he would just pick through all the details again and again. But now that he was there and in over his head all that Rhyno could think about was how Heath had smiled at him, then. Rhyno almost cringed at the memory of how good it felt to have Heath look at him like that. Heath had probably just been trying to be polite, but Rhyno had accepted and -

It had been the morning after the early December blizzard had slammed into town. The streets had still been treacherous enough that Rhyno had made the call to keep the Arby's closed for another day. It was better to lose a little revenue than to risk having it on his conscience if someone got injured trying to make it to work. Rhyno had still gone in, of course, just to make sure that everything was alright. Then when he had returned home, stressed and mostly snow blind from the bright glare, he had been greeted by the sight of all the kids sliding around the kitchen tile in their socks.

At first, Rhyno had thought that he might be hallucinating. Not that there was anything surreal about it, except for how it wasn't like anything that Rhyno had ever expected in his life. No one else would have thought that it was so weird, just a bunch of little kids playing around, but.

Rhyno's house was the same one that he had grown up in. It had belonged to his parents before they had sold it to him when they retired to Florida. Yet despite being the location of all his childhood memories, Rhyno couldn’t remember the house ever having looked like a family lived there. And he had just always figured that it never would.

There had been a moment of shocked, almost giddy happiness at seeing the kids just being kids. But no sooner had Rhyno stepped through the foyer and into the kitchen than Heath had appeared and told the kids that it was time to settle down and stop sliding around, looking sideways at Rhyno when they started to whine about wanting to play for longer since the schools were shut down for the day.

It was like when Jayla and Jolene had come home with construction paper snowflakes a few days after the move and had asked Heath excitedly if they could put them on the fridge. Heath had looked at Rhyno then, like he was waiting for permission. Like he wanted to make sure it was okay before he attached anything to Rhyno's refrigerator, and Rhyno hadn't realized before then that none of the myriad of report cards and drawings that had wallpapered Heath's trailer refrigerator had appeared on Rhyno's own after Heath and the kids had moved in. 

Rhyno felt terrible that Heath hadn't been displaying any of the kids’ stuff just because Rhyno had been doing such a piss poor job of making Heath feel welcome in his house. It was Heath's home now too, the kids’ home, at least until Heath’s constant reassurances that he would find a new place as soon as possible finally came to pass. 

Because even since before he had moved in, Heath had been saying a lot about how he didn't want to disrupt Rhyno’s life any more than he already had, didn't want the kids or himself getting in the way on account of the fact that Rhyno was already doing them such a huge favor. Rhyno had thought that it would be easier for Heath, that he wouldn't have to worry so much about money anymore. But sometimes Heath seemed more stressed than ever, or maybe Rhyno just noticed it more now that he saw more of Heath’s life. 

It had been awkward, figuring out how to live together. Rhyno's house wasn't really big enough for nine people and Heath kept apologizing them for getting in the way even though Rhyno really hadn't been using the two spare rooms or the den in the basement. The kids got into yelling matches and left toys everywhere and accidentally dropped plates and Heath was always one step behind to calm them down or tell them to pick up after themselves or promise earnestly that he would pay Rhyno for the broken dishes as soon as he could.

Rhyno didn't know how to say that he never minded any of those things at all. That it was pathetic, how badly he wanted them there. So when Rhyno had come home on that snow day he had just told Heath that it wasn't a problem that the kids were doing… whatever it was that they were doing in the kitchen.

They were practicing, Heath had explained, for something that he called at Slater Skating Shindig. Heath had laughed then, before he had sort of rubbed at the back of his neck and added that Rhyno was more than welcome to come along.

“It's a family tradition.” Heath was in his socks too, leaning against the counter as he looked away from Rhyno. “Course you'd prob’bly rather stay home, have the place to yourself again for a bit.”

Rhyno had accepted the invitation before he could think better of it.

At the kids’ insistence Rhyno joined in practicing skating, sliding around on the tile in his socks. So Rhyno had figured that it wouldn't be that hard to ice skate - he had always been good at sports. One of his few redeeming features. His football playing years were well behind him but his center of gravity probably hadn't changed. Rhyno had used that fact to reassure himself that when he humiliated himself in front of all Heath's family at least it wouldn't be because he couldn't skate.

It didn't take long after he laced up his skates for Rhyno to realize just how wrong he had been. 

Heath had told Rhyno that didn't need to run out and buy a pair of skates just for one afternoon, since there were a bunch of totes with all sizes of old skates that the family dug out of their closets to share each year. Rhyno had found a pair eventually, and even though the skates looked like they were older than Rhyno was they at least fit well enough. So Rhyno couldn't even blame it on the skates when he on his ass on the ice for the fourth time in a row.

Not that he would have. Rhyno's father had always hated It when he made excuses, and besides. Rhyno knew that all his failures were his own. 

He should have practiced more, even though stepping out onto the ice was nothing like pretending in the kitchen. Most of the kids took to it easily enough though, and Rhyno watched as Cheyenne took off running over the snowbank and across the ice like it was nothing at all. Cheyenne waved to him as she skated past with a couple of other kids and Rhyno waved back, tried to stand again.

No sooner had Rhyno tried to put all his weight on the blades than he found himself falling down again, wincing at the impact. He hadn't brought gloves and hadn't wanted to be a bother and ask to borrow a pair, the cold burning his palms as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and scooted back across the ice so that he was sitting at the edge if the rink. A couple of people stopped to ask if he needed any help but Rhyno just waved them off hoping his face wasn't too red. 

There were actually a number of other adults sitting along the edges of the rink, they just happened to be sitting back on the snow bank in folding camp chairs and not directly on the ice like Rhyno. A couple people were actually just sliding around on their regular shoes but Rhyno wasn't quite ready to accept his humiliating defeat. At least no one was laughing at him. There was laughter, sure, but that was just from Ricky and Gunner and the other littler kids that were being pulled back and forth across the ice in plastic sleds, or from the older ones that were chasing each other across the ice with snowballs in their hands, ready to pelt each other.

Well. It wasn't just the children participating in that last one.

The cold was starting to creep up his tailbone and into his spine, but Rhyno stayed where he was sitting on the very edge of the ice to watch as Heath weaved around some of his older relatives to try and avoid Harlan. Heath was quick and clever on his mismatched skates, natural on the ice even though he had told Rhyno on the drive over that he never ice skated any more except for the one time each year. The blades of Heath’s skates cut long marks behind, describing graceful curves into the ice as Heath tried to keep away from his brother.

Then Rhyno watched as Heath spun and stopped abruptly, dragging the blades to spray Harlan with a shower of tiny ice shavings.  Even from across the ice Rhyno could hear the clear peal of Heath’s laughter, could see the big fluffy pompom on top of his hat flopping back and forth as he took off again with Harlan still in pursuit.

Heath looked so happy in that moment, young and wild, and Rhyno had to look away.

The day that Heath and the kids had moved into Rhyno's house had been a chaotic whirlwind. Heath and his brothers and Dean driving back and forth across town as they moved all of Heath’s stuff. Rhyno had offered to help, but Heath had insisted that he didn't want to put Rhyno out like that when Rhyno was already doing him such a big favor. Rhyno had taken the hint and made himself scarce, done his best to stay out of the way, except -

Towards the end of the day, just when the early sunset had been streaking the sky orange and the formerly spare rooms in Rhyno's house had been filled with garbage bags full of clothes and toys, Rhyno had  stepped outside. He had been going to take out the kitchen trash, but Heath and Dean had been standing a few feet down the walkway. They both had their backs to him, must not have heard the door open because neither of them had turned around. 

Something about the way they were standing made Rhyno pause, something in the way Heath’s thin coat was drawn tight across his shoulders as he hunched against the cold, or the way Dean kicked the toe of his boot against the stone at the edge of the path again and again. Rhyno had been about to call out and ask if something was wrong until he heard Dean, his voice low and tight, saying 

“- know how it fuckin’ ends when a broke ass single parent moves in with some guy they barely fuckin’ know, trust me.”

Rhyno had turned around and gone back into the house before he had to hear what Heath said in reply. 

Heath deserved to be happy. He didn't deserve the hand that life had dealt him, and he definitely didn't deserve to have to deal with Rhyno imposing himself on Heath’s family.

Still sitting on the ice, Rhyno looked back over to see that Heath and his brothers had made their way across the rink, closer to where Rhyno was sitting. Heath cut around behind an older lady in a striped sweater to avoid Harlan, oblivious to Hayden sneaking up behind him with a huge pile of snow in one gloved hand. 

Rhyno wanted to warn Heath but he didn't know what to say, didn't want it to be obvious that he had just been sitting and staring. So he didn't say anything and ended up watching, helpless, as Hayden yanked back on the hood of Heath’s jacket and shoved the snow down the sudden gap in the neckline. Heath yelped and twisted, pivoted on his skates to shoulder checked Hayden directly in the sternum. 

Then Hayden lost his balance and flopped down prone onto the ice and Heath was grinned down at his brother, saying something Rhyno couldn't hear as he tried to clear the snow out from under his layers of clothing. He had his head sort of cocked over his shoulder, one arm twisted around behind himself, and the motion of it had pulled Heath’s shirt up far enough that Rhyno could see the pale curve of his waist all the way up to the bottom of his ribcage and Rhyno quickly averted his eyes.

He desperately hoped that he hadn't been too obvious, but, when he dared to look back, Heath was skating towards him. It had started to snow again, not much more than little bits if ice twinkling in the air, and it probably would have been beautiful if Rhyno wouldn't have been scared shitless.

Heath coasted to an easy stop in front of Rhyno, dragging the toe of one skate behind him and leaving a long, shallow scratch in the ice.

“How's it goin’?” Heath's cheeks were pink, the tips of his ears. Rhyno couldn't be sure whether it was from the chill day or from the exertion of skating.

“Fine.” Rhyno said, looking up and trying not to let his face show anything too incriminating. “Just, um. Taking a break.”

“Haha, yeah. My family can be a lot I guess.” Heath said, but before Rhyno could explain that it wasn't like that at all - the Slaters had been nothing but friendly, nicer to Rhyno than he deserved - Heath continued. “Are you havin’ fun at least?”

“Yes.” Rhyno said, too vehement, and even when he tried to dial it back he still thought that he sounded over earnest and was probably making it weird when he smiled. “I'm having a very good time.”

Heath just smiled back at him, open and happy, but before either of them could say anything else Heath jumped as if he had been goosed. For a second Rhyno wondered if Hayden had gotten the drop on him again. If Heath was going to have to try and shake all of the snow out of his shirt again directly in front of Rhyno. But then Heath stripped his gloves off in his teeth, stuffed them in one pocket as he grabbed his phone out of the other. 

Rhyno watched as he flipped it open, tongue caught in between his teeth as his eyes tracked across the screen. 

“My mom says my Uncle Marty just got here and he says that the lights're still on in the van. Shoot, guess I gotta go shut ‘em off.” Heath stuffed his phone back in his pocket, looked down at Rhyno again “You need help getting up?”

Rhyno shook his head, reached out to brace his hands on the ice. He just hoped that he could get up without falling again in front of Heath, but before he could even try to leverage himself up Heath stopped him.

“Where’re your gloves?”

“I forgot them.” Rhyno admitted “It's no problem though. It's fine.”

Heath wasn't having it though. “C’mon, I'm headed back to the van anyways. I'm sure I've got an extra pair in there.”

He held out his hand, clearly intending for Rhyno to take it, and -. Rhyno couldn't. There was a very solid line between appropriate employer/employee relationships and things that Rhyno didn't let himself think about. Except that this was perhaps one of the few instances where he could have an excuse to reach out and hold Heath's hand and Rhyno was weak.

Rhyno had scuffed his hands on the ice a couple of times before when he had been trying and failing to skate, and his palms felt hot and sore. It was still somehow the nicest thing that Rhyno could ever remember feeling when he took Heath’s outstretched hand, their fingers latching together as Heath hauled Rhyno to his feet.

Rhyno shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold, wobbled a little but kept his balance on the ice for the first time. It was only a couple steps to the edge of the rink and Rhyno somehow managed to keep it together until they were stepping out onto the bank. It had been awkward, walking on the skates off of the ice before, but at least Rhyno would be able to stay on his feet. Heath would let his hand go, now. It wouldn't be appropriate for them to stay touching like this any longer now that they were off the ice. 

“You good?” Heath asked, smiling at him. 

Rhyno nodded, dumbstruck. He couldn't find any words to say, couldn't articulate anything past the feeling of Heath’s warm palm against his own, the way that Heath’s grin was even brighter than the light reflecting off the snow. Rhyno no longer had an acceptable excuse, now that he didn't need to be holding Heath’s hand for balance anymore. But as they made their way Heath didn't let go and neither did he.


	30. Feel It Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Dean Ambrose - old friends)

Both of them were still a little slap happy when they got back to Roman’s parents’ house. Dean was bouncy with pleasant jitters from the leftovers of the adrenaline rush from painting the chimney, laughed a little under his breath every time he heard the spray paint cans rattle in Roman’s backpack. They walked around the side of the house instead of going through the front door, and Roman snorted and shushed him when Dean elbowed him in the ribs and made like he was going to climb over the fence to the backyard.

“There’s a gate right here. Dean, do not - Look, I’ve already got it open, why are you still -”

The backyard was just like Dean remembered it. Even in the dark Dean could see the still-familiar outline of the shed and the fire pit and the big ash tree, leaves rustling gently in the cool spring night. Dean flopped down into one of the ancient lawn chairs and Roman went in through the sliding door to drop off the backpack and. Something changed, then, while Dean was looking around the yard by himself with his hands stuffed in his pockets. It was like a hush fell over everything, over the yard and Dean and even though he could still hear the leaves and the chirping crickets with perfect clarity it all felt sort of like being underwater.

The sensation faded when Roman came back outside, shutting the door gently behind himself. He had exchanged the backpack for a case of beers that he set on the damp grass in between them before he settled into the lawn chair next to Dean's. 

“Sometimes I feel bad that I didn't keep in contact better.” Roman stretched his legs out in front of himself, not quite looking at Dean as he handed him a beer. “I just got overwhelmed with all my shit. And then you’d gotten out by the time I tried to write you again so I didn't know how to reach you.”

Dean shrugged. Roman didn't need to make excuses with him. After all, “Dude, Ro, it's fine. S’not like I tried to track you down either. I mean, your parents haven't moved. I could have come here and asked them to get me your address, but.”

Dean wasn't sure what else he could say, relieved when Roman nodded like he understood.

“They'd love to see you, you know. My family. If they were awake right now I'm sure they'd be trying to feed you.” Roman tilted his head back towards the house. “Speaking of, if you're hungry there's a bunch of stuff in the fridge.”

“Nah, thanks man. I'm good.”

There was a distinct echo in Dean's head, then. Those were the same words that he had heard and said, again and again, when he had been a teenager sneaking around Roman's house in the middle of the night. Dean was struck by a wave of deja vu that didn't really dissipate when he shook his head to try and clear his brain, a fog that didn't start to lift until he asked

“So how's everything, then?”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, everything that had you so stressed out back in the day. Your kid's gotta be, what, five?” 

Dean had figured on that being the key to redirecting the conversation and he wasn't disappointed. Roman had always talked about wanting a family, even when they had been rowdy dumbshit teenagers.

“I mean, things were rough for a while in the beginning.” Roman said, but he didn't sound too distressed about it so Dean could guess that it had turned out alright for him even before Roman went on. “I enlisted maybe a week after we found out she was pregnant? Then we got married but I had to leave right away. It sucked, dude. It was hard as fuck. First I was gone for basic and then I got deployed, so I wasn’t around most of the time when she was pregnant or right after my son was born. But we worked things out. And it's good now. It's really good.” 

“That’s great dude.”

“Thanks.” Roman beamed at him then, before he offered “I’ve got some pictures I can show you if you want.”

Dean nodded, crumpling his first can and snagging another out of the box while Roman sat up to  grab his phone out of his back pocket and tap on the screen. Dean couldn’t see what Roman was looking at yet, but the light from the screen lit his face up ghostly and blue in the quiet dark. A smile tugged at the corner of Roman’s mouth for a second before he started to talk again, almost more to himself than to Dean.

“I mean, shit’s a little up in the air now since my enlistment’s up. There’s a guy in my squad, says he could hook me up with a job on an oil rig, but. I dunno, man. Do I re-up? I don't think I wanna drive tanks any more, but what else am I gonna do?”

Dean shrugged, burrowed down in his coat a little bit as a breeze ruffled through the yard. “Beats me. Get as job at the chemical plant, maybe. You could grow your hair back out.” 

“Trust me, I can. Not. Wait. for that. Hold up, before I forget.” Roman said, put his phone back in his pocket before he shifted in the lawn chair. When Dean looked over, Roman was staring at him with the same serious expression that had always made Dean want to pick on him in high  school “You'll never believe who I ran into at Wal-Mart yesterday.”

Dean put on his best serious face to mimic Roman before he replied “Was it Elvis? Because man, c'mon, don't sell me short - I would totally fuckin’ believe it if you said you’d run into Elvis.”

Roman cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and snorted into his beer before he got serious again. “Nah, this is gonna be even harder to believe. I saw Seth, man.”

“Well. Yeah.”

There was a long, drawn out moment of silence, except for the way that it was never really completely silent outside if you listened hard enough. A car drove by out on the street, the crickets were still chirping and the leaves were still rustling and they were both still breathing but now Roman was staring at Dean like -. Like something that Dean couldn’t quite put his finger on, so Dean just kept looking back at him until Roman said

“Hold up, hold up. That didn't sound like a ‘yeah’ of disbelief, Dean.” If anything Roman was looking even more solemn, which Dean didn't get. “I could be wrong, but sounded like you  _ know _ that Seth's visiting too. Talk about a fuckin’ coincidence,both of us back in town at the same time.”

“Dude, not  _ back _ .” Dean rolled his eyes. “Seth is always in this town.”

“What?” Roman sat up then, a little too quick, which made Dean just want to slouch harder.

“Uh, yeah. He lives here. I'm pretty sure he does property appraisals or some fuckin’ thing like that? I dunno.”

It seemed like it took Roman a second to process that, so Dean sipped his beer and waited until Roman finally said “So Seth is still wandering around town. Alive. And you're sitting here with me. And not in prison?”

 Dean bristled a little bit at that. “Why would I do any shit like that?”

“Well I can think of at least one big reason.”

The conversation lapsed again for a while, Dean looking away from Roman’s serious face to stare out at the dark yard as he tried to figure out how to say what he wanted to say.

“Fuck, man, I dunno. He egged me on at the Cracker Barrel and then he threw me under the fuckin’ bus for it, but I was gonna get locked up anyway. Sooner or later, y’know? Like, don't think for a second that I've forgiven his shit, but -”

Dean sort of wished that they were drinking from bottles so that he could have a label to pick at while he tried to put his thoughts into words. Lacking that distraction he pressed his fingers against the thin aluminum of the can. Not hard enough to crush or bend it permanently, just enough pressure applied so that the can would flex under his fingertips and snap back when he released it. The silver spray paint on the tips of Dean's rough fingers was still slightly sticky and it made it look, almost, like his hand was melding into the metal of the beer can. 

“But all Seth ever wanted was to get out of this fuckin’ town, that’s why he fucked me over. But he’s still here, and. You know how they say the best revenge is living well? Well, fuck, I mean. I don't think most people would look at my life and say I'm living well. But I am living, you know? And I like my own life well enough, so fuck ‘em. I have a life and I like it and Seth just isn't a part of it at all.”

“Damn, dude.” Roman said, low, and he leaned back a little bit, looked at Dean carefully. “You ever see him around?”

Dean shrugged “Not on purpose. But we’ve run into each other a couple times. Usually he just goes the other way, but one time he started tryin’ to talk like he was gonna fuckin’ apologize or something, but fuck that. I just walked off. He doesn’t get jack shit from me.”

There was a long moment of silence. Dean didn’t think that it was uncomfortable even if it was a little awkward. He just didn't really know what else to say, so he leaned over and asked

“Didn’t you say you had some pictures of your kid to show me?”

“Oh! Yeah, shit, can’t believe I forgot.” Roman shook his head, clearing cobwebs. Dean watched as Roman pulled the phone out again, unlocked the screen and handed it over. “Here, you can scroll through ‘em if you want.”

The first picture Dean saw was of a little boy that was undeniably Roman’s son. The kid was standing in the aisle at a grocery store and holding a big bottle of Sunny D and grinning like it was the single best thing that had ever happened in his life. Dean had to look away then, took a drink before he swiped through more of the pictures. There were a lot of Roman’s wife and kid - at the park, putting together a puzzle, posing in front of a triceratops statue. There were other pictures too, little glimpses into Roman’s life that Dean couldn’t quite parse. Close up shots of what looked like a busted headlight, a red and purple sunrise, two guys in fatigues putting each other in headlocks. But then Dean had reached the end of the pictures, so he flipped back to the beginning.

Dean had been expecting to see the photo of Roman’s son holding the Sunny D again. He had forgotten that the most recent shots were actually from earlier that night. On the school roof, poorly focused selfies of the two of them standing in front of the freshly spray painted chimney. Dean was suddenly glad that he had gone along with the pictures even if he had given Roman a hard time about wanting photographic evidence of their misdeeds.The front flash had washed the pictures out pretty bad so they stood out stark and glowing against the darkness beyond. In most of the shots they were partially cut off or half out of the frame but Dean could still see the shadows of their younger selves in their grinning faces as they flickered by. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 30/30!
> 
> I hope that you all enjoyed the ride again this time around! 50k words, oof. But I had a hell of a good time writing it and I really appreciate you reading along and sticking with me. Just like last time, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE AMAZING RobinTrigue.

**Author's Note:**

> I write everything on my phone, so heinous autocorrect errors sorta come with the territory. Please let me know if there is something particularly terrible that needs fixing, or if I didn't warn for something that I should have. Kudos and comments are loved dearly - they really help encourage me to keep pushing myself to do stuff like this!
> 
> Come holla at me on [tumblr ](http://www.bingitoff.Tumblr.com)


End file.
